Demon Days by Gorillaz
Silent Alarm by Bloc Party
Metallica (Black Album)
Tragic Kingdom by No Doubt
Blood Sex Sugar Magic by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Tragic Kingdom is one of my favorite albums of all time. It’s just so damn good.
Seen both of these in concert. Still both amazing shows.
Hard agree. One Red Hot Minute was really the beginning of the end.
Smashing Pumpkins: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
R.E.M. - Automatic for the people
These are great. In this vein I add:
Pearl Jam - Yield
(and forgive me but)
Radiohead - OK Computer
Kid A was class when it came out
I don’t know is Mellon collie was a huge drop off, but their direction definitely changed.
I agree with both of you. I’m very fond of everything by them up through the American Gothic EP, but Mellon Collie is still kinda the peak.
Peak, yes. But it’s not like their next couple of albums were terrible. They were just a different direction.
Oh absolutely. Adore was actually the album that got me into them.
Gish is a transcendental album that created the genre that dominated the next 20 years: alternative rock.
Everything after Gish might have been more popular or well known, but none of it will ever approach being as influential.
As massive R.E.M. fan, this made me conflicted! Automatic for the People is beautiful, and most days my favourite, but I wouldn’t want to miss where the band went after.
Their last album was brilliant, Accelerate was fun… I know AftP was a hell of a peak, but I can’t find it in me to write off anything except a chunk of Around the Sun…
Thank you for allowing me to talk about my favourite band. :)
Accelerate was a lot of fun, but for me the last album that was stellar front to back was Life’s Rich Pageant. It was joyous, raucous, and they hit their signature sound head on. Every track sparkled (even the Superman cover that Michael hated).
That’s a very fair opinion too! I feel they changed about 4 times as a band (understandably I guess as they were about for 3 decades), and damn Life’s Rich Pageant was special - it’s one I play very often, and it is stacked! :)
It’s the best they sounded as a pure rock band, even though I have such a soft spot for Murmur. New Adventures touched on that feeling again, but it wasn’t front to back perfect in the same way (partly because of its length!)
The trouble I have is I couldn’t imagine life without what came after Life’s Rich Pageant, for instance Automatic meant a great deal to me, as it was the first album I remember hearing and loving growing up. :)
For sure! One of the reasons they’re such an amazing band is that they were able to innovate and adapt over a long career without losing their core style. They grew with their audience instead of apart from it.
My opinion is based on my own music preference (I’m a sucker for power pop) but there’s no denying R.E.M. stayed at the top of their game far longer than most bands even stay together.
Gorillaz fell off? Since when?
Idk if I would say they “fell off” but Demon Days was fucking AMAZING and Plastic Beach was really good. Plus all their stuff from before that ranged from good to great too. Everything that came after Plastic Beach was…. Mediocre at best and this is just my own subjective opinion obviously as is anyone’s opinion on music but like I grew up listening to all sorts of electronic music and I just don’t like any of their newer stuff it’s experimental though which aligns with their style I’ll give them that
Side note: as a fan of electronica/electronic music I HATE how “EDM” is now the blanket term used. Not all songs by Gorillaz are EDM.
You’re right and I corrected myself
Yeah wtf is OP smoking their last album was one of my favs of the year
Pink Floyd - The Wall
Not their last album before Roger Waters left the band (that was The Final Cut, the album which followed), but it was far superior, and arguably their best album-- and inarguably their magnum opus.
The David Gilmour-led era of Pink Floyd was ok, but it would never reach the fevered heights and sick intensity of the Roger Waters days.
I agree except that Dark side of the moon is clearly Pink Floyds magnum opus.
I understand that Roger is a divisive character (personally I love him despite his flaws), but god damn he could write an album.
More popular, more commercially successful, and more accessible to casual fans. Agreed.
But for magnum opus, I gotta agree with the wall for a few reasons
- They made a movie out of it
- The ode to the intense para social relationships that revolve around stardom and how a truly crazy creative can take advantage of it in scary ways was not only true back then, but predictive of how much worse it would get in current time.
- DSotM always seemed like a lot of good ideas in an unordered list. I felt like they could be scrambled and the album would be similar, except for the first and last songs… Meanwhile the wall tells a story of pain, alienation, search for meaning, lashing out, and then a quest for self-forgiveness.
Fair shout. I also love the wall.
Best guitar solo of all time helps too
It’s good album. But I view The Wall as a Waters solo album than a Pink Floyd one.
It’s an okay album. It’s a rock opera. It’s very melodramatic. There are some great songs.
I go back and forth on Animals or Meddle as their best record, with Wish You Were Here close behind.
Definitely The Wall feels much more like the solo Roger stuff than the best of Floyd.
Though the real purists only like the Barrett stuff.
how do you figure that?
He essentially did write the whole thing.
He wrote all of The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and Animals.
He essentially wrote everything post Syd Barret all the way up to the Final Cut which was supposed to be Floyd’s last album.
No. Dark Side was the first album Waters wrote all of it.
I’m not saying that the other members didn’t contribute, just that post Barret, Rogers wrote the vast majority.
The drop in vision and quality after The Final Cut really shows. The division bell is essentially Gilmour ranting at the poltergeist of Roger.
Except for the parts that David Gilmour wrote
Except for the parts that David Gilmour wrote
David Gilmour was good at solos, not song writing.
Some of the tracks are based on his childhood, and seeing how many The Wall tours he did. In 2016 he turned it into an opera. So the album is very personal to him.
A lot of the tracks have to do with what both Waters and Gilmour went through as children, as they both lost their fathers to World War II. David Gilmour got writing credit on a bunch of the tracks as well. And given the amount of work that both Waters and Gilmore put into the album, it’s not really right to say that it was a solo project. Not even to mention what Nick Mason put into it. If you wanna cut out Richard Wright’s contributions, considering that he got fired during this album’s production, that would be fair. 
The Wall is absolutely Rogers album. The concept and the songs are all his. Gilmour only received credits on three of the songs.
You can’t point to a few guitar solos and then give Gilmour half the credit, it was a great contribution, but even Gilmour would admit that Roger wrote the wall.
Everyone knows Ummagumma was their best album, they’re just too scared to admit it!
Best song is several small species
Massive Attack - Mezzanine
They still had a few good tracks afterwards but that album really was a masterpiece.
Metallica (Black Album)
Is this a joke? This is where they’re newfound mediocrity was cemented. They peaked at Ride the Lightning, everything after that was more and more watered down garbage.Sorry, I meant I strongly disagree.
The Suburbs by Arcade Fire
Sadly, Guns n Roses, Appetite for Destruction.
Nothing any of them have done since has matched the quality of creativity that they did on aod.
I’m not saying I didn’t like the use your illusion pair, and Slash has done some damn good work on specific songs in his various projects. But the band as a whole fell off hard after their very first. Axl in particular kinda lost his songwriting during use your illusion, which had some great songs, but it wasn’t consistently great as albums
Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica
This is really the only band I have that hipster thought that they were better before they got big. This was the last album they made that I love every song on. Then they dropped Good News for People Who Like Bad News and their style was almost completely different, but also got many more people listening to the band.
Similarly I liked Kings of Leon before they changed the original vocalist. They had a rather unique sound when I discovered Aha Shake Heartbreak, but by Only By The Night, they had completely lost everything about their sound that I liked.
I’m in agreement that The Moon and Antarctica is the peak album, but I feel Good News is a great representation of the band transcending into something brand new rather than just fizzling. It’s Iike going out with a bang. Then after that it feels like fizzle haha.
I would probably have hated Good News if I had followed them before it came out, but it has a great representation of rebirth and becoming an unapologetically new person. I return to it usually when I go through loss.
Girl You Know It’s True- Milli Vanilli
Claude Debussy - Claire de Lune
The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium
Weather Report - Heavy Weather
Rush - 2112
Mr. Bungle - California
Dr. Dre - The Chronic
Snoop Doggy Dogg - Doggystyle
Wu Tang Clan - Enter the 36 Chambers
Beastie Boys - Paul’s Boutique
Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds of Fire
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
Getz/Gilberto/Jobim - The Girl from Ipanema
Mozart’s Requiem (good place to peak!)
Metallica - Master of Puppets
Cynic - Focus
Death - Human
Suffocation - Effigy of the Forgotten
Eric Johnson - Ah Via Musicom
Steve Vai - Passion and Warfare
Yngwie Malmsteen - Rising Force
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme
Radiohead - Kid A
Deftones - White Pony
Secret Chiefs 3 - Book of Horizons
Dream Theater - Scenes from a Memory
The Allman Brothers - Live at the Fillmore East
Michael Jackson - Thriller
Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
Yeah Mozart really fell off after he died.
The Beatles - Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
Bruhhhhhhhh
White Album? Abbey Road? I mean, even if you aren’t a big fan of Yellow Submarine or Magical Mystery Tour, how can you say freaking Abbey Road is a comedown from Sgt Pepper’s?
Actually, you might be right. I’ll take the Beatles out. They were good all along.
Metallica - Master of Puppets
Thank you for correcting the original poster on this one.
Once they went from metal to hard rock, it was over for me.
It’s bizarre to hear anyone mention anything other than Master of Puppets. As an old school death metal guitar player turned jazz geezer, Master of Puppets is, by a wide margin, unanimously considered the best metal album of all time by most metal musicians who know their shit.
Disagree a lot about Radiohead. They are probably one of the best bands with the best discographys ever. Almost every album are very, very good
I find this to be an accurate representation of Thom nowadays: https://youtu.be/mwR6Se-WzgY?si=psInrHdVvVOe9PzC
Kid A was genius, I’m curious on your thoughts of In Rainbows?
Meh. Didn’t suck but nothing will have the cohesiveness of that album.
Hard disagree on Rush’s 2112 being peek, if anything that album was the start of one of the greatest streaks in music history. They did like 4-5 excellent albums after that. Personally if I were to rank Rush albums, I’d put Farewell to Kings above 2112, maybe hemispheres too if only for La Villa Strangiatto. Not that I don’t love 2112, but relative to the other albums in that streak I think it’s a little tiny bit overrated
Agreed. Peak Rush is Hemispheres (Circumstances is possibly the best rock song ever written) for me, but really I love almost everything from Fly by Night to Grace Under Pressure. That’s 8 albums I can easily listen to front-to-back.
Whelp. As I typed I realized I forgot about Caress of Steel. I suppose that says something…
Man, if you liked deloused I get why you’d be disappointed by what comes after, but Francis the Mute is something else. It’s structured way different, it’s a damn opera, but 20 years on that is my all time favorite album.
Do you like guitars? Yngwie, Vai, Johnson.
Yeah. But I’m just naming ones I can think of where the album was never eclipsed. It just so happens that that is the case for those guitar players…and it’s not like we’re going to hear Yngwie or Johnson somehow suddenly reinvent themselves this late in their careers.
For example, I’m a HUGE fan of Khruangbin and Julian Lage but….what will Julian Lage or Khruangbin give us in the future? We may never know if they have peaked until that time has passed.
Peaked at Pablo Honey. Radiohead after that was meh. Take it or leave it.
Opinions. This person has em.
Breakfast in America - Supertramp
Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine
lmao.
if you don’t get it — it’s his first album
I find myself listening to year zero a lot, maybe I’m too big a fan of NIN in general. Something I like from every album.
I’ve been a NIN fan since way back and I felt like every album was their best before falling off with pretty much every album when it first releases. After a couple of listens and thinking I’m not gonna ever get into the new stuff, I catch myself having songs off their newest album stuck in my head only to repeat the process with the next one.
This happens to Queens of the Stone Age with me too but less so. I always go into a new Qotsa album with the understanding that it’s going to take a couple listens before it becomes my new favorite album.
I really enjoyed year zero as well. It felt fresh, there was a decent amount of experimentation, and I appreciated the lyrical themes
as nin albums became less driven by chunky 80s synthesisers and more driven by guitars, they got worse. however, the quake soundtrack and ghosts I-IV are excellent, in my opinion.
I would push this to The Downward Spiral.
Broken is my absolute favorite. But starting with The Perfect Drug he began to do nothing but suck at ever greater intensity.
I was going to come in and say The Fragile
And Justice For All… By Metallica
Master of Puppets > …And Justice for All
Too easy
Death Magnetic
(…And Justice for All was the second CD that I owned, and I love it)
A Rush of Blood to the Head by Cold Play…
Of what came after I like X&Y and Mylo Xyloto too, but this one was their best.
I know bands can change their style over 20 years, and I’m glad the band can be happy touring and making music they like and I don’t hate people that like their new stuff, but something about the brilliant, raw feeling their music had (imo anyway) gave way for generic electronic music trend-chasing. When I heard “Higher Power” I was like “wow it’s The Weekend just with Chris Martin singing.”
