LCD Soundsystem
Whenever I get into writing on the internet, I generally theme my writing heavily on music. I used to for instance write a lot of music reviews, generally on stuff I thought was awesome and should be canonized in some form or another. The canon, however, is one of these theoretical literary terms that never can be truly pinned down. Anyways I was obsessed back then when I was in high school and trying to find this thing, or rather these things, and by that I mean I was obsessed with finding the best music by anybody. I graduated in '04 just as the Flames were reinvigorating their fans and their city, and Bush was beefing with Kerry, and Iraq was kinda looking like a dumb idea and political songs against all that stuff (minus the Flames) were just starting to make a lot of liberal-Democrat bands some Republican-sized money. Ooops I ran on again. So around the age of 16 I had amassed a lot of information about music and a lot of great CDs and I was under the impression that my opinion meant something and thus needed to be documented. I was reading a lot of music lists back then (primarily Blender Magazine's top 100 American albums and their list of the 500 CDs You Must Hear Before You Die) and also a lot of Allmusic.com's 4.5 and 5 star review and from these sources I was getting all my music and even today I still use these as points of reference.
So I started this list of the greatest albums of all time and eventually I made a master list of 117 that I cannot abide by but before that I settled on a top ten. This was based on the critical opinions I had read on these albums and also my opinions. This list was made probably when I was 18 and I've generally stuck by it because it's pretty good and I'm not so pretentious to try and make a list like this again. I bring it up here because I've been listening to these albums as of late and I thought I'd share some thoughts on each. The pictures are listed in the order I feel they belong now, although there have been shifts within the 4-9 range over the years. 1-3 and 10 I've always felt occupied the right spot, more or less.
1 Sgt. Pepper's and this usually duke it out for the top spot in lists I've seen over the years and it's taken me years to really understand and like Pepper's. The Beach Boys on the other hand hit me write in the gut right away in high school with this album. Maybe it was the hyped-confidence that comes along with this album, or the idea of Brian Wilson's "teenage symphonies to God," He only knows, but I loved this album right from the start. In high school it fit my disposition so well that I've never been able to appreciate Sgt. Pepper's because I just don't feel like John and Paul really approached the human condition nearly as much in their wild studio experimentation (a move based in part of the group's appreciation of this album).
2 Revolver is another album that I think Sgt. Pepper's fucks with too. The band has far more memorable tunes here than anywhere I think (minus Doctor Robert, which apparently only I know about). I guess having the Beatles occupy the second spot has always made sense to me. Revolver has some of the greatest moments for each Beatle (Taxman, Here, There and Everywhere, Tomorrow Never Knows & Yellow Submarine). This album and its gamut-running tracklist, I think, best represents a band that made their music like a shark would, constantly moving.
3 Besteveralbums.com rates this at number one and they have a very democratic way to making their list. My faith in my top three has only been shaken by the fact that I've listened to all three so much. I now have to really be in the mood for these to hear them. Generally though I've felt they make a great top three and I like that we move away from the 60's at this point. Nowadays I listen to the reggae version of this called Radiodread by Easy Star All-Stars (who also did Dub Side of the Moon) more than the original but as I listen to Yorke and crew rock out on Electioneering at this writing my faith is very much affirmed. 
4 Neil Young recently took the fourth spot due to the fact that I've never had a bad listen to this short masterpiece. Split into an acoustic and an electric half (featuring his greatest rock band Crazy Horse) Rust Never Sleeps is like Revolver in that it does a great job in pinning down an extremely elusive artist. Kurt Cobain would later cite Young's question on burning out or fading away with his pen and a bullet but Young has managed to keep his fire burning strong. Or as Eminem put it: "when I go out I'ma go out shootin' / Not when I die, when I go to the club stupid!"
5 As a hip-hop fan Public Enemy needs to make fifth spot for me. Generally this is regarded as the towering moment in hip-hop when the stars lined up and for one moment the Public Enemy operation (as it involved many producers, an MC, a hype-man, a DJ, a goddamn Minister of Information and a Media Assassin) climaxed this burgeoning movement called hip-hop. I'm glad the word climax came to me because that really seems to encapsulate the way the people that loved this album felt about it. For me there's only one bad moment here and it is Flavor Flav's track but even then it helps push the other stuff to catastrophic levels. Chuck D's rhyming at the time was more advanced than most rappers and his topics were cutting edge. Soon after this release, NWA came and proved they had more A than Chuck D plus that pesky Minister of Information pulled a Mel Gibson and hated on some Jews which gave their detractors a lot of detracting room. Still, they managed to release another critical favourite and have some hits and hit reality shows as well way after the fact. Plus they made it cool to wear a giant clock as a pendant, so take that fashion world.
6 Prince's "White Album" was his last perfect one and his most perfect at that. Each song is in stark contrast with its comrades here as Prince abandons his backing band, the Revolution, and treks forward on his own and creating an R&B tradition wherein the cocky motherfucker R&B genius produces, arranges, composes and performs their own work (on Brown Sugar, D'angelo credits himself with all these roles and one more). The thing I like the most about Sign is that Prince does almost all of the vocals and he uses Queen-style harmonic, hearing so many Prince guises together (including his female alter ego Camille) can be haunting.
7 If I were ever to redo this list it would be Highway 61 Revisited representing Mr. Dylan but at the time I bought into the hype that this is Dylan's best album and it's pretty fair hype. As well as Dylan's best it is seen as one of the greatest break-up album along with Blue by Joni Mitchell. I listened to this a lot after my first taste of heartbreak, back then it made a lot more sense to me, nowadays Highway 61 says a lot more to me.
8 This brought hip-hop back to New York in a big way. Although the guys from the west were still selling more LPs, it was now clear that New York's ghettoes had a lot to say and they didn't have to rely on samples of 70's hits. NaS, Biggie, Mobb Deep and the individual members of the clan would lead the East Coast Hardcore movement which brought hip-hop to its raucous past while at the same time creating a world that was as menacing as the one they were trying to leave. 
9 The Beastie Boys debut outsold Run DMC's Raising Hell (rap's first platinum album) but it didn't do much to better the genre aesthetically. The success of the Beastie's first run looked to be shortlived especially when the group denounced their antics. Three years later at the close of the 80's They released the last true old-school hip-hop album and also the best of the form. The vocal interplay of the Beasties had otherwise died in hip-hop and the density of samples was almost dead too, but the Beasties managed to get the Dust Brothers ditch their sample-collage album and let them rap over the music instead. the album flopped but as time went on people warmed up to it.
10 The last album to make my list, I think, and this one like some of the others seemed an obvious choice. Now I might put his other Born album in here but maybe not. Born to Run was supposed to sound like Phil Spector producing Roy Oribson singing Bob Dylan. To me, it succeeds in such a pretentious endevour and for that I love it very very much, so much in fact, that I wore out the CD playing it in my car too many times.
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