Music... camps?

https://bobbuckojr.bandcamp.com/
https://alexcunningham.bandcamp.com/
https://excepter.bandcamp.com/
https://fatwhitefamily.bandcamp.com/
https://futureapetapes.bandcamp.com/
https://heycolossus.bandcamp.com/
https://idlesband.bandcamp.com/
https://horselords.bandcamp.com/
https://kinggizzard.bandcamp.com/
https://melkbelly.bandcamp.com/
https://michaelpotter.bandcamp.com/
https://protomartyr.bandcamp.com/
https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/
https://sunwatchers.bandcamp.com/
https://tropicalfstorm.bandcamp.com/

LISTS
The 50 Best Good Bad Movies
The 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years
1000 Novels Everyone Must Read
The Real Top 100 - Rock
25 Great Albums from Bad Artists
20 Oddball Sci-Fi Films of the 1970s

from the award-winning Macroscopic 2013 blog:

17 December 2013:
With this blog soon coming to an end, here's a list of sites that provide either information about books or full-text online versions of books:

About books:
I S B N D B
[The rest of these links are now all at Greater Books. But don't forget the Bookshelf (or Book Pickings, because, in Webland, we must have multiple titles for everything) section of Brain Pickings]

Books:
[These links are now all at Greater Books.]

Academic or trade databases and reference guides requiring subscriptions:
L'Année Philologique
Books in Print
Columbia Granger's World of Poetry
Early English Books Online
Electronic Enlightenment
Literary Encyclopedia
Literature Online
Philosopher's Index
Project Muse
Women Writers Project

The Jazz Messengers!

w/ Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Curtis Fuller, Cedar Walton, Reggie Workman, Art Blakey:
Buhaina's Delight - recorded 1961; released 1963
Caravan - 1962; 1963
Ugetsu [concert] - 1963
Free for All - 1964; 1965
Kyoto - 1964; 1966
Indestructible - 1964; 1966
Golden Boy - 1964

The Art Ensemble of Chicago

A Jackson in Your House [1969] (Mitchell, Jarman, Bowie, Favors)
Tutankhamun [1969]
The Spiritual [1969]
People in Sorrow [1969]
Message to Our Folks [1969]
Reese and the Smooth Ones [1969]

Comme à la Radio [1969] (Brigitte Fontaine, Areski Belkacem, Mitchell, Jarman, Bowie, Favors, [Wadada] Leo Smith, Kakino de Paz, Albert Guez)
Certain Blacks [1970] (Mitchell, Jarman, Bowie, Favors, Chicago Beau, Julio Finn, William Howell)
Go Home [1970] (Mitchell, Jarman, Bowie, Favors, Fontella Bass, et al.)

Chi-Congo [1970] (Mitchell, Jarman, Bowie, Favors, Famoudou Don Moye)
Les Stances a Sophie [1970] (Mitchell, Jarman, Bowie, Favors, Moye, Bass)
With Fontella Bass [1970]
Phase One [1971] (Mitchell, Jarman, Bowie, Favors, Moye)
Fanfare for the Warriors [1973] (Mitchell, Jarman, Bowie, Favors, Moye, Muhal Richard Abrams)

Nice Guys [1978] (Mitchell, Jarman, Bowie, Favors, Moye)
Full Force [1980]
Great Black Music, Ancient to the Future [1982]
The Third Decade [1984]
Naked [1985-6]

Ancient to the Future (Dreaming of the Masters Series Vol. 1) [1987] (Mitchell, Jarman, Bowie, Favors, Moye, Bahnamous Lee Bowie)
The Alternative Express [1989] (Mitchell, Jarman, Bowie, Favors, Moye)
The Art Ensemble of Soweto [1989-90] (Mitchell, Jarman, Bowie, Favors, Moye, Elliot Ngubane, Joe Leguabe, Zacheuus Nyoni, Welcome Max Bhe Bhe, Kay Ngwazene)
America-South Africa [1989-90]
Thelonious Sphere Monk (Dreaming of the Masters Series Vol. 2) [1990] (Mitchell, Jarman, Bowie, Favors, Moye, Cecil Taylor)
Dreaming of the Masters Suite [1990] (Mitchell, Jarman, Bowie, Favors, Moye)
Coming Home Jamaica [1995-6] (Mitchell, Bowie, Favors, Moye)

Tribute to Lester Bowie [2001] (Mitchell, Favors, Moye)
The Meeting [2003] (Mitchell, Jarman, Favors, Moye)
Sirius Calling [2003]

John Coltrane

studio:
Africa/ Brass: Africa; Greensleeves; Blues Minor
recorded and released 1961
The Africa/Brass Sessions Vol. 2 [1974]: Songs of the Underground Railroad; alternate version of Greensleeves; alternate version of Africa
1991 (Japan, entitled Complete Africa/ Brass) and 1995 (entitled The Complete Africa/ Brass Sessions) reissues: both albums + The Damned Don't Cry [originally released on The Mastery of John Coltrane Vol. IV: Trane's Modes]; Africa (First Version) [second alternate version, originally released on Trane's Modes]

Coltrane: Out of the This World; Soul Eyes; The Inch Worm; Tunji (Toon-Gee); Miles' Mode
recorded and released 1962
1997 reissue: + Big Nick [originally released on the compilation, The Definitive Jazz Scene Volume 1]; Up 'Gainst the Wall [originally released on Impressions]
2002 reissue: + Not Yet; alternate version of Miles' Mode; four alternate takes of Tunji; two versions of Impressions, the second of which was originally released on The Very Best of John Coltrane
all tracks from original and 1997 reissue included in The Classic Quartet boxed set

Ballads: Say It (Over and Over Again); You Don't Know What Love Is; Too Young to Go Steady; All or Nothing at All; I Wish I Knew; What's New; It's Easy to Remember; Nancy (With the Laughing Face)
recorded 1961-2, released 1963
2002 reissue: + All or Nothing at All; five takes of Greensleeves, including the 7-inch; and seven alternate takes of It's Easy to Remember
all tracks from original, All or Nothing at All, and the 7-inch version of Greensleeves included in The Classic Quartet

Crescent: Crescent; Wise One; Bessie's Blues; Lonnie's Lament; The Drum Thing
recorded and released 1964
all tracks included in The Classic Quartet

A Love Supreme: Acknowledgement; Resolution; Pursuance/ Psalm
recorded 1964, released 1965
2002 reissue: + four-track concert version of the album; alternate version and breakdown of Resolution; and two alternate takes of Acknowledgement
2015 reissue: + two vocal overdubs from Acknowledgement; undubbed version of Psalm; two additional alternate takes of Acknowledgement; and a breakdown and false start of Acknowledgement
all tracks from original and alternate version of Resolution included in The Classic Quartet

The John Coltrane Quartet Plays: Chim Chim Cheree; Brazilia; Nature Boy; Song of Praise
recorded and released 1965
1991 (Japanese) reissue: + Feelin' Good [originally released on The Mastery of John Coltrane Vol. 1: Feelin' Good]
1997 reissue: + Nature Boy (First Version) [originally released on The Mastery of John Coltrane Vol. 1: Feelin' Good]; Nature Boy (Live Version)
all tracks included in The Classic Quartet

Ascension: Ascension
recorded and released 1965

Meditations: The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost; Compassion; Love; Consequences; Serenity
recorded 1965, released 1966

Kulu Sé Mama: Kulu Sé Mama; Vigil; Welcome
recorded 1965, released 1967
2000 reissue: + Selflessness (originally released on Selflessness Featuring My Favorite Things, 1969); Dusk Dawn (Issued Take) (originally released on Living Space, 1998); Dusk Dawn (Alternative Take)
Vigil and Welcome included in The Classic Quartet

Om: Om
recorded 1965, released 1967

Expression: Ogunde; To Be; Offering; Expression
recorded and released 1967
1991 and 1993 reissues: + Number One [originally released on The Mastery of John Coltrane Vol. III: Jupiter Variation, 1978]

Transition: Transition; Dear Lord; Suite
1993 reissue: Dear Lord removed [released on Dear Old Stockholm instead]; Welcome and Vigil added, despite also being included on Kulu Sé Mama
recorded 1965, released 1970

Sun Ship: Sun Ship; Dearly Beloved; Amen; Attaining; Ascent
recorded 1965, released 1971
2013 reissue: + breakdown, false start, and alternate version of Dearly Beloved; alternate version, breakdown, and insert of Attaining; breakdown, alternate version, and insert of Sun Ship; two incomplete versions and three inserts of Ascent; and one alternate version of Amen
all tracks from original included in The Classic Quartet

Interstellar Space: Mars; Venus; Jupiter; Saturn
recorded 1967, released 1974
all C D versions: + Leo; Jupiter Variation [both originally released on The Mastery of John Coltrane Vol. III: Jupiter Variation, 1978]

First Meditations (For Quartet): Love; Compassion; Joy; Consequences; Serenity
recorded 1965, released 1977
all C D versions include alternate version of Joy--this take also released with overdubbed percussion and strings on Infinity, 1972
all tracks included in The Classic Quartet

Dear Old Stockholm: Dear Old Stockholm; After the Rain; One Down, One Up; After the Crescent; Dear Lord
recorded 1963 (tracks 1-2); 1965 (tracks 3-5); track 1 originally released on the varied-artists compilation, The Definitive Jazz Scene Volume 2, 1964; track 2 originally released on Impressions, 1963; track 5 originally released on Transition, 1970; tracks 3 and 4 originally released on The Mastery of John Coltrane Vol. II: To the Beat of a Different Drum, 1978
all tracks included in The Classic Quartet

Stellar Regions: Seraphic Light; Sun Star; Stellar Regions; Iris; Offering [originally released on Expression]; Configuration; Jimmy's Mode; Tranesonic + alternate takes of 3, 2, and 8
recorded 1967, released 1995

Living Space: Living Space; Untitled 90314; Dusk-Dawn; Untitled 90320; The Last Blues
recorded 1965, released 1998; tracks 1-4 originally released on The Mastery of John Coltrane Vol. 1: Feelin' Good, 1978; track 1 also released with overdubbed percussion and strings on Infinity, 1972

The Mastery of John Coltrane Vol. III: Jupiter Variation, 1978, includes an additional track: Peace on Earth, also released with overdubbed percussion and strings on Infinity, 1972

studio and concert:
Impressions: India; Up 'Gainst the Wall; Impressions; After the Rain
1 and 3 recorded in concert 1961; 2 recorded 1962; 4, 1963; released 1963; track 4 also included on Dear Old Stockholm
2000 reissue: + Dear Old Stockholm [originally released on the varied-arists compilation, The Definitive Jazz Scene Volume 2, 1964; later on Dear Old Stockholm]
both studio tracks included in The Classic Quartet

Live at Birdland: Afro Blue; I Want to Talk About You; The Promise; Alabama; Your Lady
1996 reissue: + Villa
1-3 recorded in concert 1963; 4, 5, and Villa recorded 1963; released 1964
all three studio tracks included in The Classic Quartet

from the award-winning Macroscopic 2013 blog: [updated]

4 January

The U K magazine Sound on Sound has published these excellent 'Classic Tracks' essays but it's hard to get them listed on a single page, because the designers of their web site, like most web developers, couldn't care less about making information accessible. For the time being, this approach (somewhat) works:

https://www.soundonsound.com/search/all/classic%252Btracks

Reading the Wikipedia entry on the magazine makes me less surprised at the high quality of these articles. Sound on Sound seems to be a superior publication in its field (perhaps the U S magazine Tape Op, launched in 1996, was inspired by Sound by Sound, which debuted in 1985).

from the award-winning Macroscopic 2013 blog:

10 January 2013

A list of publications covering Jazz, Classical, experimental, and so on, is comparatively quite depressing. In Jazz specificially, this situation arises not so much due to an excess of lemming sycophants, as in Rock genres, but because of sheer lack of interest. Thousands of listeners, not hundreds of thousands, devote a fair amount of time to listening to new Jazz, especially that which is not traditionalist in some fashion. Signal to Noise, mentioned previously, is switching to biannual publication. For traditionalists (you know... Woody Allen?) the Mississippi Rag is apparently gone with the passing of its editor and founder Leslie Johnson. You've got the mainstream rags: Jazz Times, Down Beat, Jazz Journal, Jazzwise, and Jazziz; two fine New York-centric publications (New York City Jazz Record and Hot House). Cadence, with its curious mix ranging from the Blues to Free Jazz, and previously connected to an eponymous major mail-order/online retail operation (now called Klompfoot), is being revived as an annual; the fate of the Canadian publication Coda, which for many years was the best among those covering modern/ avant-garde/ Free Jazz, is still uncertain, having gone on extended hiatus. While I'm only discussing English-language publications in these posts, the Jazz world is served by publications in Germany, Japan, and elsewhere to a greater extent than Rock music.

Stretching beyond Jazz, the situation seems better, though the U K magazine Avant is gone, following the London Musicians Collective's usually-excellent Resonance. The Wire helps tremendously, though it toned down its coverage of the Jazz avant-garde for much of the last decade only to pick it up again more recently. That publication's unpredictability with regard to what music gets covered presents several barriers to its relevance for post-Classical/ modern Classical/ post-Rock experimental/ avant-garde Jazz musicians. Artists whose releases have not been reviewed in some time will suddenly grace the magazine's cover. Artists with huge followings like Radiohead or Wilco get high accolades for brief moments, then get ignored again. It should be renamed the Waver.

Music Works, a Canadian voice for experimentalists, could be said to be the global voice. Two cheers for the Canadians--that is, if Coda comes back--because these publications know what they're doing and do it well. Plenty of academic journals do too (The Leonardo Music Journal, the A R S C Journal, Jazz Perspectives, Popular Music and Society, and a smattering more), but we're leaving those aside for now.

from the award-winning Macroscopic 2013 blog: [updated]

14 January 2013

Now, part 2 of the review of publications pertaining to Jazz, modern Classical, experimental, and so on: the e-zines, blogs, and so on.

Two are indispensable: Point of Departure and Paris Transatlantic [defunct]. A few others are worthy of attention: Destination: Out [defunct]; Disquiet; Hz [defunct]; Improvisor (formerly a magazine) [now entirely defunct]; Monk Mink Pink Punk [defunct]; and Squid's Ear (apropos my comment about e-zines doing web sales, this site is connected to Squid Co, where you can buy all sorts of Jazz and other hard-to-find-at-most-retail-stores music). Vital Weekly has offered a huge number of reviews for quite some time now, available via mailing list.

Many blogs, they come and go; here's some: Another World of Sound [defunct], Bang the Bore [defunct], Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches, Free Jazz Collective, 100 Greatest Jazz Albums (not exactly what its title suggests), Outer Space Gamelan [defunct], Scrapyard Forecast [defunct], Streams of Expression [more about poetry now], Touching Extremes, Watchful Ear. And just about Anthony Braxton: If You Know What I'm Saying [defunct?].

Classical music is covered at the daily Music and Vision; also the blog On an Overgrown Path. I don't follow these as much, especially not relatively-traditionalist Classical. I'm going to do a little research.

from the award-winning Macroscopic 2013 blog: [updated]

3 December 2013
I noted earlier this year (14 January) that I wanted to learn more about extant Classical publications, in print and online. Having recently visited one of the best newsstands in the country, Bulldog News, in Seattle's University District (they're also responsible for My Mag Store), I've got at least a few to list--still staying outside academia:

American Record Guide
B B C Music Magazine
Classical Music
Classical Recordings Quarterly
Early Music America
Early Music Today
Fanfare
Gramophone
Listen
Musical Opinion
Opera News
Opera Now
La Scena Musicale

several Classical publications have an instrumental focus:
Choir and Organ
Classical Singer
International Piano
Organ
Pianist
Strad
Strings

--leading us to other instrument-centric publications:
Acoustic Guitar
American Lutherie
B M G Magazine [defunct?]
Classical Guitar
Drummer
Fretboard Journal
Guitarist
Guitar Player
Guitar World
Keyboard
Making Music
Modern Drummer
Rhythm
Saxophone Journal

For musical theatre...
Sondheim Review

More from the digital-only realm--not too much here, though as I find more I'll update this post:
Classical Source
La Folia
New Music Box

In addition to Sound on Sound and Tape Op noted previously, other publications about recording music include:
Computer Music
Electronic Musician
Mix
Music Tech
Recording

And magazines about playback equipment:
Absolute Sound
Audio Ideas Guide (now digital-only)
Stereophile

Finally, publications geared toward those in the music trade:
Billboard
Complete Music Update
C M J Music Report
Music Connection
Music Row
Music Trades
Music Week
New Music Weekly
Pollstar

from the award-winning Macroscopic 2013 blog:

28 December 2013:
The major academic English-language journals on music:
Asian Music
Chamber Music Journal
Computer Music Journal
Early Music
Early Music History
General Music Today
Journal of the American Musicological Society
Journal of Musicology
Journal of Music Theory
Journal of New Music Research
Journal of the Royal Music Association
Leonardo Music Journal
Music Analysis
Musical Quarterly
Musical Times
Music and Letters
Musicultures
Music Perception
Music Theory Online
Music Theory Spectrum
19th Century Music
Perspectives of New Music
Sonus
Theoria

7 January 2013: [updated]
My "great books" project [Greater Books] brings to mind sites like Metacritic that compile reviews and attempt to give a numerical summation of what, say, fifty publications have said about a given music album. The average number given should be ignored; many of the sites whose reviews are being tabulated do not give a numerical score or even a school-style letter score. They offer unhelpful non-explanations of their "proprietary" method of determining Metascores that, in a roundabout fashion, says that they prefer certain publications or critics over others and don't want to bother putting that preference into words (in other words, be a mindless consumer). But they do provide quick links to many reviews. They also remind me of the large number of music publications, online and print, nearly all offering year-end lists. These annual "best of" lists appearing over the course of December and January always intrigue me, often disgust me as well, as they're supposed to. Many web sites that did not begin as periodicals, such as the All-Music Guide (Best Albums of 2012) and E Music (Best Albums of 2012) have a blog-like section and also give annual lists. The web behemoth, Amazon (The Best Albums of 2012), once got a lot of attention for its yearly list, but I had to dig around to find it this year.

The music industry, financially speaking, is certainly struggling. Total sales and the number of high-selling releases are down. Terrestrial radio offers fewer options than ever, or at least since its early years in the 1920's. And a few print magazines have stopped, or switched to online-only. Nonetheless, as with book publishing, more is available than ever before. Going into questions of aesthetics, that glut of material may very well be the reason music seems less significant. The music being created is no longer, in the abstract, as a whole, such a grand gesture, a unique treasure. Certain artists and works do stand out; using your own mix of standards, you need to filter the suggestions made by these publications, many with a strong interest, financial or intellectual, in getting you to buy new music, or at least make a lot of clicks and scrolls.

The following is a list of extant music publications, as well as publications that offer all the expected content of a music-focused publication but which also focus on film, literature, etc., plus a link (if available) to their yearly round-up of the best albums. Many of the print magazines do not give away these lists for free on their web sites. [If the publication's status has changed, it is noted in brackets.]

online:
Absolute Punk (Top 30 Albums of 2012) [title change: Chorus F M]
Ad Hoc
Alt Sounds
Aquarium Drunkard
Blastitude
Bowlegs
Club Fonograma (Best Albums of 2012)
Collapse Board
Consequence of Sound (Top 50 Albums of 2012)
Coke Machine Glow (Top 50 Albums 2012) [Defunct]
Country Standard Time
Delusions of Adequacy (D O A) (Best of 2012)
Drowned in Sound (Favorite Albums of 2012)
Dusted [Defunct]
Engine 145 (Top Albums of 2012) [Defunct]
Fact
Faster Louder (Top 50 Albums of 2012)
Fast 'n' Bulbous (The Best Albums of 2012)
405 (Albums of the Year)
Freaky Trigger
Gigwise (Albums of the Year)
Hip Hop D X (Top 25 Albums of 2012)
Impose
In Music We Trust
K Mag
Line of Best Fit (The Best Fit Fifty Albums of 2012)
Live Music Blog
Louder Than War (The Albums of the Year 2012)
Music OMH (Top 100 Albums of 2012)
New Noise
No Ripcord (Top 50 Albums of 2012 (Part One); Top 50 Albums of 2012 (Part Two))
Obscure Sound (Best Albums of 2012)
Okayplayer (Top 12 L Ps of 2012)
Perfect Sound Forever
Pitchfork (The Top 50 Albums of 2012)
Pretty Much Amazing (Best Albums of 2012)
Resident Advisor (Top 20 Albums of 2012)
Reverb
Reggae Report
Skyscraper (formerly printed)
Slicing Up Eyeballs [Defunct]
Soundblab
Sound It Out
Sputnik Music (Top 50 Albums of 2012)
State (Albums of 2012)
Stereogum (Top 50 Albums of 2012)
Still Single
Tiny Mix Tapes (Favorite 50 Albums of 2012)
Tone Deaf
Urb (formerly printed)
Wondering Sound [Defunct]
Yellow Green Red

print:
Alarm
Alternative Press (10 Essential Albums of 2012--see below)
American Songwriter (Top 50 Albums of 2012)
Artrocker (Artrocker Awards)
Big Cheese
Big Takeover
Black Velvet
Blues Matters
Blues Music Magazine
Blues and Rhythm
Blues and Soul
Blurt
Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles
Clash(The Top 40 Albums of 2012)
Classic Rock
C M J New Music Report
Cyclic Defrost
Decibel (The Top 40 Albums of 2012--see below)
Decoder Magazine
D J Mag
D J Times
Elmore
Exclaim! (Best Albums of 2012)
Fader
Filter (Top 10 of 2012)
Ghetto Blaster
Goldmine
Hittin' the Note
Iron Fist
Juke Blues
Kerrang!
Living Blues
Loud and Quiet
M Music and Musicians
Magnet (Top 25 Albums of 2012)
Maximum Rocknroll
Metal Hammer
Mixmag
Mojo (50 Best Albums of 2012--see below)
New Musical Express(Albums of the Year)
Off Beat
Outburn
Performer
Prog
Q (50 Best Albums of 2012)
Record Collector
Record Collector News
Relix
Respect
Revolver
Rock-a-Rolla
Rock Sound
Rolling Stone(50 Best Albums of 2012)
Shindig!
Songlines
Source (Top 20 Albums of 2012--see below)
Spin (50 Best Albums of 2012)
Stomp and Stammer
Substream
Terrorizer
This Is Fake D I Y
Ugly Things
Uncut (75 Best Albums of 2012--see below)
Under the Radar(Top 100 Albums of 2012)
Vibe
Vive le Rock!
Wax Poetics
Wire
XLR8R (Best of 2012: Releases, Part One; Best of 2012: Releases, Part Two)
X X L

Publications that cover music but also focus on other media:
online:
Digital Fix
Paste (The 50 Best Albums of 2012)
Mxdwn
Pop Matters (The 75 Best Albums of 2012)
Quietus (Albums of the Year 2012)
Slant Magazine (The 25 Best Albums of 2012)
Slug Magazine
Spectrum Culture (Top 20 Albums of 2012)


print:
Complex
Entertainment Weekly (10 Best Albums of 2012)
Fact (The 50 Best Albums of 2012)
Vice

Village Voice, with its famous Pazz and Jop Critics Poll that collects the top-ten lists of hundreds of critics [the subject of another post at some point this year], plus many other "alternative" newsweeklies, of which the most prominent in music have been the Chicago Reader and the Boston Phoenix--the latter now only online--should be noted, as should:

the Onion's A V Club (The Best Music of 2012);

the London newspaper the Guardian (Best Albums of 2012) has become as much a trendsetter as Pitchfork--listener beware!; the New York Times (Popcast: The Best Albums of 2012) is not so organized;

the government suggests a few (N P R Music's 50 Favorite Albums of 2012 and B B C Music's Top 25 Albums of 2012);

at least one person at M T V (Best Albums of 2012) still listens to music;

and the true curios of the bunch: A B C News (The 50 Best Albums of 2012), the Associated Press (A P Music Writers' Top 10 Albums of the Year), and Time (Top 10 Everything of 2012: Albums).

The Album of the Year web site provides a few lists not available online: Alternative Press's 10 Essential Albums of 2012 and Insound's Top 10 Albums of 2012 (apparently already replaced on their site by a longer "staff picks" list).

Another site, Year-End Lists, transcribes several of the print magazines' lists noted above but unavailable at their sites: Decibel; Mojo; Source; Uncut; Wire.

9 January 2013:
Making a single list of the major music publications, and seeing the voluminous output of their annual reviews, makes me inclined never to read such lists again (unless of course I make them myself--ed.). Just as the musicians put themselves into cultural silos called Heavy Metal or Indie or whatever the horrible post-Pearl Jam/ post-Green Day schlock is called these days, or even confine themselves to local scenes (certainly prevalent in Athens, Ga., where I've spent much of my life), writers on music rarely engage with those who differ significantly in tastes and background. Only a few music e-zines truly branch out beyond song-composing or electronica artists. Dusted and Tiny Mix Tapes are the principal examples. In print, The Wire's editors often trip over themselves in their efforts at eclecticism; granted, we prefer they try and fail. Its U S doppelganger, Signal to Noise, stays more within the Jazz/ Improvised realm. Otherwise, the dominant trend with these publications and their annual reviews is to lie--not purposely, but indirectly nonetheless. That is, if they offer the "top" or "best" albums of 2012 without acknowledging the obvious broad, genre-based limitations at work, they're being disingenuous at best. At least Metal publications state their area of interest plainly.

Now that personal blogs, even blogs shared by several authors, are no longer faddish, old-fashioned 1990's-style e-zines seem more prevalent than ever (if not prominent). Apparently enough people wanting to write about music, but not willing to create their own site or blog, are willing to work for a pittance writing reviews. (Maybe many of these writers are working for little more than free access to music and gigs.) Granted, a few publications are largely the work of a few individuals; still one can imagine a different version of music publishing online, closer to the model suggested by Fast 'n' Bulbous. There, a single individual reviews more albums than many publications do. Then he organizes his favorites into an elaborate array of lists. But his approach is uncommon; it requires more time and effort than most can handle. In other words, the relative lack of barriers that defines web publishing certainly has contributed to the current glut of e-zines, but it had more of a direct relationship with blogs and personal sites. Perhaps as more sales happen online, popular-music critics can reap some benefits—learning some Web design in the process, becoming a pro at developing all those "click bait" listicles and ads that pollute our sight. That line of thought makes me wonder why more of these sites don't attempt what Insound and E Music are doing: integrating sales with editorial content. Of course, in my cynicism regarding the crap music most of these e-zines are peddling, I'm ignoring the youthful enthusiasm many of these writers undoubtedly feel, presumably having found a coterie of like-minded fans.

12 January 2013:
Album of the Year uses a method somewhat similar to Metacritic, at times more transparent, at other times lacking in explanation. Their method starts out simple: a first-place finish in a year-end list gets an artist a certain number of points, second-place gives a smaller number, and so on. But they never bother to tell us exactly how many points. Someone who finds mathematics more amusing than I do could figure it out, assuming they don't weight certain publications more. But that might not be a safe assumption, because...

Like Metacritic, they make the mistake of estimating a numerical score for an album based on its reviews when those reviews did not give any numerical score; and offer no explanation of how those estimates were divined, other than noting that certain publications are weighted more. These scores, highlighted in green next to an image of the album's cover, are hard to avoid when browsing the site. Only the year-end summary focuses on the relatively simple, verifiable approach of rating albums based only on other numerical lists.

30 January 2013: [updated]
Having analyzed Album of the Year, we should discuss a similar site, Best Ever Albums. As stated on its 'How It Works' page: this site "aggregates over 7,900 different greatest albums charts to provide an easy way for visitors to look up and find out the greatest albums in history." My initial reaction was absolute shock at that number: 7,900—asking, "Music publications have made that many lists? Really?" But, of course, not really. Many lists have been published over the years, but this site only has 18 of them, as listed here:

N.M.E 's 100 Best Albums Of All Time (2003) (New Music Express)

The Top 100 Albums (2001) (V.H.1)

Top 100 Greatest Music Albums (2005) (Channel 4)

Top 100 Greatest Music Albums (2000) (Melody Maker)

100 Greatest Albums of All Time (1995) (Mojo)

The Guardian 100 Best Albums Ever (1997) (The Guardian)

Top 100 Albums (2006) (A.B.C)

100 Greatest Albums Ever (2006) (Q)

100 Greatest Albums Ever (2003) (Q)

Top 100 Greatest Music Albums (1997) (Q)

The Definitive 200 (2007) (National Association of Recording Merchandisers—only the first 100 provided at this site; go instead to: http://eil.com/features/Definitive_200.asp)

Greatest 100 Albums of All Time (2006) (The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles and Albums with N.M.E)

The Top 50 Albums of All Time (2008) (Sound and Vision Magazine)

Virgin All-Time Top 1000 Albums (2000) (Virgin)

Top 100 Albums Ever (2010) (Consequence of Sound)

Top 500 Albums of All Time (2012) (Rolling Stone) [updated version of 2005 list with additions from list of albums released in the Aughts]

Top 500 Albums of All Time (2005) (Rolling Stone) [book version of 2003 list]

Top 500 Albums of All Time (2003) (Rolling Stone)

Where do the other 7,886 lists come from? Users. So that total is constantly changing, by the way. Granted, the site is quite transparent in its methods, unlike Album of the Year. You can even edit the 'Overall Chart' to create an aggregated list based just on 14 of those 18 charts (including only the most recent of the three lists each from Q and Rolling Stone). Nonetheless, this site has to be one of the strangest of all user-generated "2.0" sites out there. Submit your own list of the greatest albums of all time, see how your list compares to the overall average, perhaps get upset at the difference, create more user profiles so you can create many lists all somewhat similar so that you can alter the overall score. Why not?

[As of June, 2016, that total of 18 has increased to 43. They use the term, "recognised charts," to refer to these, as compared to "member charts," not suggesting a high estimation of those members' input. Here're those added:

100 Best Albums of the 2000s (2011) (Rolling Stone)

100 Best Albums of the Nineties (2010) (Rolling Stone)

100 Best Albums of the Eighties (1989) (Rolling Stone)

50 Best Albums of 2014 (2014) (Rolling Stone)

Critics' Picks: 10 Best Albums of 2012 (2012) (Billboard)

Critics' Picks: 15 Best Albums of 2013 (2013) (Billboard)

The 10 Best Albums of 2014 (2014) (Billboard)

The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2013) (New Musical Express)

Top 100 Greatest Albums of the Decade (2009) (New Musical Express)

Top 903 Listener Voted Albums of 2008 (2008) (K E X P)

The 100 All-Time Greatest Albums (2013) (Entertainment Weekly)

The Top 200 Albums of the 2000s (2009) (Pitchfork)

The 50 Best Albums of the Decade (2000-2009) (2009) (Paste)

CoS Top of the Decade: The Albums (2009) (Consequence of Sound)

Best of the Aughts: Albums (2010) (Slant Magazine)

Top 100 Albums of the 1990s (2003) (Pitchfork)

Best Albums of the 1990s (2011) (Slant Magazine)

The 90 Best Albums of the 1990s (2012) (Paste)

Top 100 Albums of the 1980s (2002) (Pitchfork)

The 80 Best Albums of the 1980s (2012) (Paste)

Best Albums of the 1980s (2012) (Slant Magazine)

Top 100 Albums of the 1970s (2004) (Pitchfork)

The 70 Best Albums of the 1970s (2012) (Paste)

Popjustice's 33 Best Albums of 2011 (2011) (Popjustice)

The Clash Top 40 Albums of 2008 (2008) (Clash)

So I ask again: is this all an elaborate joke? Given that 29,000 members have submitted charts currently totaling more than 23,000, and assuming that some of those members submit a huge number of charts, probably only a few thousand individuals don't think it's a joke—or they're in on the joke, getting kickbacks from the money generated by advertising on the site.]

1 February:
Critics' lists not among the 18 at Best Ever Albums:

British Broadcasting Corporation - Music of the Millennium

Guardian - The 50 Albums That Changed Music

Short List - The 50 Coolest Albums Ever

Time - All-Time 100 Albums

Also, one can read transcriptions of many more lists at Rocklist (one would like to think that the name is a pun on the word, rockist, but don't count on it) and a transcription of Vibe's 100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century at Dave's Music Database. You'll have to find the most-bored person in the world to write the creators of Best Ever Albums and ask why they don't include more of these lists in their equations.

3 February:
For more lists not included at Best Ever Albums, Rocklist, or elsewhere, go to the following page at Dave's Music Database:

http://davesmusicdatabase.blogspot.com/p/links.html.

7 February:
Studying "great books" lists has lead me, as seen here, to one of my periodic reviews of music-album rankings. And it has lead me for the first time to ponder why music listmakers seem dead-set on ranking the listed albums. The logic at work, that of mathematics surely, but also that of competition (gaming, sportsmanship, capitalism), has been used by nearly every critics' poll to determine the order in which to list albums--in stark contrast to the personalized lists more common in "great books" list-making, wherein books are generally listed chronologically: given numbers often, but only for organization's sake, with no thought given to which are the top five or ten. As I've discussed in the "great books" posts, many of the lists include excerpts of books, essays originally published in periodicals, and so on. The music lists, on the other hand, focus on albums, with on occasion separate lists for singles. Only with halls of fame do we see a similar approach to "great books": artists themselves are included, with no indication of one being greater than another, except indirectly in that a few artists are inducted in their first year of eligibility, others are not; and those artists not inducted as early as possible, even when they are inducted, receive a lower level of support. This means that the album lists are simpler, and easier to compare with each other; but they also fail to relate a broader history of the music eras and genres covered by the list. Many of the "great books" listmakers write entire books explaining their selections, in the process relating an informal history of literature, and in some cases civilization itself.

8 February: [updated]
Given their implicit acceptance of the notion that those included in a list are winners, and that the entity ranked no. 1 in the list is the winningest of the winners, the ultimate list to which all creators of music-album rankings defer is that of the highest-selling albums. No matter how many users submit their own lists at Best Ever Albums, Album of the Year, and similar sites, no list will ever have the input of such a large number of individuals as sales charts do. Indeed, critics' list are both compared to the list of highest-selling albums in any given nation, and at times informed by a goal of making the list different from those charts. Any overview of critics' "best of" lists needs to keep in mind the "blockbuster" albums that have such a strong effect on listeners and musicians, especially when they are young and haven't been exposed to a broad array of music.

A problem arises, though, when we consider how long to make any list of the top-selling albums. It could go on forever, right down to self-released C.D.R's that have sold no copies or digital downloads with no downloaders. Even using a numerical determinant, such as one-million copies sold, is not as exact as one would like: the tabulations of sales has always been a source of controversy, especially before the launch of Sound Scan. The R.I.A.A's official site provides of list of all albums that have been certified platinum five times (named Top 100 Albums, though the list is far greater than 100). In Britain, the Official Charts Company provides a list of The Official Top 40 Biggest Selling Albums of All-Time[alas, apparently no longer online]. Outside the U.S and U. K, sales have not been as consistently measured--nor would such lists be of significance to the history of popular music beyond a few nations like Germany (West Germany) and Japan, though hopefully they will be in the future.

In the Rock era at least, most of the albums that sold well were also good, though obviously not the best according to most standards, such is the relatively-objective nature of sales charts (though I suppose a populist could decide that the highest-selling albums are, by definition, the best). Following a transition era of 1985-1994, where an increasing number of the best-selling albums were either more obviously non-Rock in instrumentation and production, or blatantly-derivative and non-creative Rock music, mainstream music went to shit. The confounding success of the American Idol television program has only confirmed this--indeed, the participants unwittingly mock the very idea of popular music having any artistic value. Despite occasional great singles (e.g. Kylie Minogue's 'Can't Get You Out of My Head', Jeremih's 'Birthday Sex', Gnarls Barkley's 'Crazy', Martin Solveig/ Dragonette's 'Hello!', Frank Ocean's 'Thinkin Bout You') the hit parade, especially the album charts, tends to be one disaster after another (the divas who rule the pop world—Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Adele, Katy Perry, Kanye West—often merely sell their personalities, crappy stories about them crafted into short films with big budgets but little to no artistry). In the list below, albums released from 1995 on have been crossed out, while those released 1985-1994 are put in brackets.

Since the "best of" lists done by magazines, writers, radio stations, etc., tend not to include compilations, a comparison between the best-selling lists, with compilations removed, and critics' lists is helpful (especially as the U K list includes three compilations in the top ten, the U S only one). I've also excluded movie-related albums, at least insofar as they are compilations, which they nearly always are (even if they emphasize a single artist, such as with Saturday Night Fever or The Bodyguard).

[See also the other section of The World's Wide Web that lists the highest-selling U.S albums from eight million copies upward.]

U.S (The top 73, selling more than ten million copies):
Thriller - Michael Jackson
Led Zeppelin [IV] - Led Zeppelin
Back in Black - A.C/ D.C
Come On Over - Shania Twain
Rumours - Fleetwood Mac
[Appetite for Destruction - Guns n' Roses]
Boston - Boston
[No Fences - Garth Brooks]
Jagged Little Pill - Alanis Morissette
[Cracked Rear View - Hootie and the Blowfish]
[Metallica - Metallica]
Hotel California - The Eagles
The Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
Santana - Supernatural
Born in the U.S.A - Bruce Springsteen
The Backstreet Boys - The Backstreet Boys
[Ropin' the Wind - Garth Brooks]
...Baby One More Time - Britney Spears
Bat Out of Hell - Meat Loaf
[Ten - Pearl Jam]
[Whitney Houston - Whitney Houston]
Millennium - The Backstreet Boys
Purple Rain - Prince and the Revolution
The Wall - Pink Floyd
[Breathless - Kenny G]
[Hysteria - Def Leppard]
[Slippery When Wet - Bon Jovi]
[No Jacket Required - Phil Collins]
Wide Open Spaces - The Dixie Chicks
[II - Boyz II Men]
Led Zeppelin II - Led Zeppelin
The Woman in Me - Shania Twain
Yourself or Someone Like You - Matchbox 20
Pieces of You - Jewel
Abbey Road - The Beatles
Houses of the Holy - Led Zeppelin
[CrazySexyCool - T.L.C]
No Strings Attached - 'N Sync
Falling Into You - Céline Dion
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles
Human Clay - Creed
Devil Without a Cause - Kid Rock
[Double Live - Garth Brooks]
Tapestry - Carole King
Come Away With Me - Norah Jones
The Stranger - Billy Joel
The Beastie Boys - Licensed to Ill
Let's Talk About Love - Céline Dion
[Unplugged - Eric Clapton]
[Dookie - Green Day]
[Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em - M.C Hammer]
21 - Adele
Oops!...I Did It Again - Britney Spears
The Marshall Mathers L.P - Eminem
Led Zeppelin II
Hybrid Theory - Linkin Park
Like a Virgin - Madonna
Pyromania - Def Leppard
Fly - The Dixie Chicks
The Eminem Show - Eminem
1984 (MCMLXXXIV) - Van Halen
[Garth Brooks - Garth Brooks]
Confessions - Usher
Van Halen - Van Halen
Sevens - Garth Brooks
Tragic Kingdom - No Doubt
Can't Slow Down - Lionel Richie
[Nevermind - Nirvana]
Elvis' Christmas Album - Elvis Presley
[The Joshua Tree - U.2]
Eliminator - Z.Z Top
[Faith - George Michael]
Daydream - Mariah Carey
[Music Box - Mariah Carey]
'N Sync - 'N Sync

Two of these albums—The Wall - Pink Floyd and Double Live - Garth Brooks—are officially higher on the list than placed here, but only because of confusing R.I.A.A rules that sometimes, but not always, count a release twice if it's a double album. The Beatles - The Beatles; Physical Graffiti - Led Zeppelin; Life After Death - The Notorious B I G; Speakerboxxx/ The Love Below - OutKast; Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness - The Smashing Pumpkins; Up! - Shania Twain; and Songs in the Key of Life - Stevie Wonder are generally included on the list of ten-million sellers for the same reason. So are Bruce Springsteen's Live/ 1975-85 and the 1990 Led Zeppelin boxed set because the R.I.A.A will count boxed sets multiple times depending upon the number of discs or tapes. This rule has justly been subject to criticism. It should be ignored.

U.K:
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles
(What's the Story) Morning Glory? - Oasis
Thriller - Michael Jackson
21 - Adele
[Brothers in Arms - Dire Straits]
The Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
[Bad - Michael Jackson]
Back to Black - Amy Winehouse
[Stars - Simply Red]
Rumours - Fleetwood Mac
Come On Over - Shania Twain
Back to Bedlam - James Blunt
Urban Hymns - The Verve
Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel
No Angel - Dido
Spirit - Leona Lewis
Bat Out of Hell - Meat Loaf
Talk on Corners - The Corrs
White Ladder - David Gray
Spice - The Spice Girls

At this point in the development of the award-winning Macroscopic 2013 blog, I attempted to construct a canon of Rock albums based on sales and critics' lists. This was not to assert or assess the validity of those critics' claims, or make any argument about how to consider the highest-selling albums from a critical vantage point. It was just an exercise in list-making: collating lists that don't necessarily match up in terms of how they were put together (especially when it comes to unacknowledged criteria for deciding what kind of music to include); determining to what extent a critical consensus exists among (mostly) U.S and British writers on Rock; and thus seeing more clearly what artists and albums have been ignored (a definite problem in the case of artists who focused mostly on singles instead of albums). Here's how that process went: (but please don't actually read beyond this point):

9 February: [updated]
To compare differing albums lists, I've sketched out this uniform method of inscribing them in a single list: [name of publication] - [year list was published] - [number of items in the list]. As with the "great books" project [that is, what became Greater Books], only those lists that cover all music (even if Jazz, Classical, and more are essentially excluded) from all periods (but essentially from the mid-1950's onward, because the album had become dominant by that point) are included. So, with Best Ever Albums and Rocklist as our sources, plus a few direct links, we have in reverse-chronological order:

(Top 500 Albums) Rolling Stone - 2012 - 500

(The 75 Albums Every Man Should Own) Esquire - 2009 - 75

(Top 50 Albums of All Time) Sound and Vision - 2008 - 50

(21 Albums That Changed Music) Q - 2007 - 21

(The 50 Albums That Changed Music) Observer [Guardian's Sunday paper] - 2006 - 50

(100 Greatest Albums Ever) Q - 2006 - 100

(All-Time 100 Albums) Time - 2006 - 100

(50 Most Influential Albums of All Time) Kerrrang! - 2003 - 50

(100 Best Albums) New Musical Express - 2003 - 100

(100 Greatest Albums Ever) Q - 2003 - 100

(Top 500 Albums) Rolling Stone - 2003 - 500

(Top 40 Albums) U S A Today - 2003 - 40

(The Best Albums Ever...Honest!) Sunday Herald - 2001 - 103

(All Time Top 100 Albums) Melody Maker - 2000 - 100

(100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century) Vibe - 1999 - 100

(100 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die) Kerrang! - 1998 - 100

(100 Best Albums Ever) Guardian - 1997 - 100

(Top 100 Greatest Music Albums) Q - 1997 - 100

(100 Greatest Albums of All Time) Mojo - 1995 - 100

(100 Greatest CD's) Entertainment Weekly - 1993 - 100

(Top 100 Albums) New Musical Express - 1993 - 100

(The Vulture's 100 Best Albums of All Time) The Times Magazine - 1993 - 100

(The 25 Greatest Albums of All Time) Spin - 1989 - 25

(All Time 100 Albums) New Musical Express - 1985 - 99

(All Time Top 100 Albums) Sounds - 1985 - 100

(All Time Top 100) New Musical Express - 1974 - 100

With the Kerrang! lists, there's an implicit genre limitation in addition to those noted above, but since it's not stated we can just treat it as an all-encompassing list; in other words, for those compiling that list, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, and to a lesser extent the slickly shit that passes for mainstream Rock these days are superior. I'm only including lists by periodicals (thus not the lists by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the B.B.C, V.H.1, Channel 4, the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, and the lists from the book version of the Rolling Stone list and the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles and Albums) and also excluding the lists from e-zines that are fairly young, Consequence of Sound and Slant Magazine. One list from a print publication, Short List, is excluded because it's not dated. A few other lists would be included, but are not available online (Billboard, Blender, Urb). The Time and Vibe lists are only arranged chronologically; so, by the way, is the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, a decent effort if only because of its size, but hampered by its laughable inclusion of many recent British mediocrities.

So which albums are on more of these lists than others? Focusing on the top five of each list, the number of placements for the following albums is so:

Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys: 9
Meet the Beatles - The Beatles: 1
Rubber Soul - The Beatles: 2
Revolver - The Beatles: 12
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles: 5
The Beatles - The Beatles: 1
If You're Feeling Sinister - Belle and Sebastian: 1
Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath: 1
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars - David Bowie: 2
Sex Machine - James Brown: 1
Ride This Train - Johnny Cash: 1
The Clash: The Clash - 2
Kind of Blue - Miles Davis: 2
Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan: 8
Blonde on Blonde - Bob Dylan: 3
The Marshall Mathers L.P - Eminem: 1
Angel Dust - Faith No More: 1
What's Going On - Marvin Gaye: 3
Dookie - Green Day: 1
Electric Ladyland - The Jimi Hendrix Experience: 1
King of the Delta Blues Singers - Robert Johnson: 1
Destroyer - Kiss: 1
Trans-Europe Express - Kraftwerk: 1
Led Zeppelin II - Led Zeppelin: 1
Led Zeppelin [IV] - Led Zeppelin: 1
Master of Puppets - Metallica: 2
Astral Weeks - Van Morrison: 3
Phases and Stages - Willie Nelson: 1
Nevermind - Nirvana: 6
In Utero - Nirvana: 1
Straight Outta Compton - N.W.A: 1
Definitely Maybe - Oasis: 1
The Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd: 1
Doolittle - The Pixies: 1
Lust for Life - Iggy Pop: 1
The Bends - Radiohead: 2
O.K Computer - Radiohead: 3
Transformer - Lou Reed: 1
Automatic for the People - R.E.M: 1
Beggars Banquet - The Rolling Stones: 1
Let It Bleed - The Rolling Stones: 1
Exile on Main Street - The Rolling Stones: 2
The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths: 2
Roots - Sepultura: 1
Nevermind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols - The Sex Pistols: 3
Graceland - Paul Simon: 1
In the Wee Small Hours - Frank Sinatra: 1
Horses - Patti Smith: 1
Darkness on the Edge of Town - Bruce Springsteen: 1
Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen: 1
The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses: 6
Fun House - The Stooges: 1
Marquee Moon - Television: 2
Heathen Earth - Throbbing Gristle: 1
The Velvet Underground and Nico - The Velvet Underground: 3
Swordfishtrombones - Tom Waits: 1

The top twelve albums:
1. Revolver
2. Pet Sounds
3. Highway 61 Revisited
4. The Stone Roses
4. Nevermind
6. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
7. Blonde on Blonde
7. The Velvet Underground and Nico
7. Astral Weeks
7. What's Going On
7. Nevermind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols
7. O.K Computer

[Of the 25 lists now included at Best Ever Albums but which weren't there in 2013, only two fit the criteria I used to determine this master list: New Musical Express's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, published 2013; and Entertainment Weekly's The 100 All-Time Greatest Albums, 2013. The following albums received additional top-five placements; their new total number listed:

Revolver: 14
Purple Rain: 1
Exile on Main Street: 3
Thriller: 1
London Calling: 1
The Queen Is Dead: 3
Hunky Dory: 1
Is This It: 1
The Velvet Underground and Nico: 4

To compare these new results with the old top-twelve albums, see the updated 20 February post below].

19 February:
In the post of 9 February, I listed those albums that had made the top five of twenty-four lists of the best albums of all time. Those who'd prefer a method of giving a certain number of points for a first-place finish, a smaller number for a second-place finish, and so on, would point to the arbitrariness of focusing on the top five. Why not the top ten, fifteen, or twenty? My problem with such an opinion is that it ignores the random nature of the lists in the first place. Several publications, especially New Musical Express and, in recent years, Q, have published more lists than others; we often don't know which critics contributed to the lists; the two Rolling Stone lists are quite similar, but if we were to exclude one we'd have to establish clear, but inherently arbitrary rules, for limiting the number of lists from a single publication; and that's just the beginning. As we've seen from sites like Best Ever Albums or The Greatest Books, those aggregating these lists weigh some over others, in some cases without telling us which lists are considered superior, and how that superiority is computed. So how do we not know that the original listmakers pulled off similar maneuvers? Anyone familiar with the history of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame can imagine that the notorious Jann Wenner's votes for the Rolling Stone lists, if he participated, could have counted more than the others' by factor of hundred, a thousand, who wants to know....

Instead, I'm going to see which of the albums I've already pulled from these lists appear in positions six through ten of those lists in which they didn't place in the top five. If, say, Radiohead's The Bends (which, as we've seen, made the top five of two lists) appears in the next five of two additional lists, it will get that second number placed next to it. Those albums that only appear in the positions, six through ten, will constitute a second list. Finally, an aggregated list will be made, with the highest-selling albums not on the critics' lists added at the end. Since we've got a list of 12 albums from the critics' list so far, the addition of a few more could give a number comparable to the highest-selling albums prior to 1985. This new list will be ready tomorrow.

While I don't want to belabor the point, this discussion further highlights the massive difference between "great books" and music-albums lists, and the superiority of the former. Since many of the book lists are made by individuals, their arbitrariness is obvious from the outset. Only the wide temporal scan from which they come (nearly 120 years) gives them more of a hard (social) science flavor than their music counterparts. Too fixated on ranking albums, popular-music listmakers have almost never made individualized lists. They collaborate, a fine gesture. However, the results rarely provide more than blurbs about the albums and often-interchangeable articles serving as a cheap way to sell magazines. An exception to this general rules is Tom Moon's 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, a decent-enough work (better than the 1,001-albums book), hampered primarily in that the author seems to know next to nothing about Rock music since the Punk era. It's especially useful if you want some guidance on Rhythm and Blues, Soul, and New Orleans artists that have been neglected by the Rock doc/ deluxe-expanded-legacy/ retro rags arbiters of commodification.

20 February [updated]:
Looking again at the list of critics' favorites, but with the number of placings at spots six through ten placed next to the number of top-five placings... Of those albums that didn't receive more than one top-five placing, one received enough six-through-ten rankings to warrant inclusion in a final list: The Beatles' "white album." Of those that received only two top-five rankings, several improved their position significantly: Exile on Main Street especially, followed by Ziggy Stardust, The Queen Is Dead, and Marquee Moon. Two albums that received three six-through-ten placings (London Calling and Are You Experienced?) also deserve mention.

[As per the updated 9 February post, the new tallies for those albums listed in the two lists added by Best Ever Albums since 2013 are included in brackets below.]

Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys: 9-2 [9-3]
Meet the Beatles - The Beatles: 1
Rubber Soul - The Beatles: 2
Revolver - The Beatles: 12-2 [14-2]
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles: 5-3
The Beatles - The Beatles: 1-4 [1-5]
If You're Feeling Sinister - Belle and Sebastian: 1
Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath: 1
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars - David Bowie: 2-2
Sex Machine - James Brown: 1
Ride This Train - Johnny Cash: 1
The Clash - The Clash: 2
Kind of Blue - Miles Davis: 2
Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan: 8
Blonde on Blonde - Bob Dylan: 3-5
The Marshall Mathers L.P - Eminem: 1
Angel Dust - Faith No More: 1
What's Going On - Marvin Gaye: 3-5
Dookie - Green Day: 1
Electric Ladyland - The Jimi Hendrix Experience: 1-1
Destroyer - Kiss: 1
Trans-Europe Express - Kraftwerk: 1
Led Zeppelin II - Led Zeppelin: 1
Led Zeppelin [IV] - Led Zeppelin: 1-1
Master of Puppets - Metallica: 2
Astral Weeks - Van Morrison: 3-2
Phases and Stages - Willie Nelson: 1
Nevermind - Nirvana: 6 [6-1]
In Utero - Nirvana: 1
Straight Outta Compton - N.W.A: 1
Definitely Maybe - Oasis: 1-2 [1-3]
The Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd: 1-1
Doolittle - The Pixies: 1 [1-1]
Lust for Life - Iggy Pop: 1
The Bends - Radiohead: 2-1
O.K Computer - Radiohead: 3
Transformer - Lou Reed: 1
Automatic for the People - R.E.M: 1-1
Beggars Banquet - The Rolling Stones: 1
Let It Bleed - The Rolling Stones: 1-1
Exile on Main Street - The Rolling Stones: 2-3 [3-3]
Roots - Sepultura: 1
Nevermind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols - The Sex Pistols: 3-5
Graceland - Paul Simon: 1
In the Wee Small Hours - Frank Sinatra: 1
Horses - Patti Smith: 1-2
The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths: 2-2 [3-2]
Darkness on the Edge of Town - Bruce Springsteen: 1
Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen: 1
The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses: 6-2 [6-3]
Fun House - The Stooges: 1
Marquee Moon - Television: 2-2
Heathen Earth - Throbbing Gristle: 1
The Velvet Underground and Nico - The Velvet Underground: 3-4 [4-4]
Swordfishtrombones - Tom Waits: 1-1
[London Calling - The Clash: 1-3
Thriller - Michael Jackson: 1
Purple Rain - Prince: 1
Hunky Dory - David Bowie: 1-1
Is This It - The Strokes: 1-2]

The albums that placed at positions six through ten, but didn't make the top five of any list, and the number of lists in which they appeared at positions six through ten:
Back in Black - A.C/ D.C: 1
Dirt - Alice in Chains: 1
Music From Big Pink - The Band: 1
The Band - The Band: 1
Abbey Road - The Beatles: 1
Vol. 4 - Black Sabbath: 1
Live at the Apollo - James Brown: 1
The Boatman's Call - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: 1
Meditations - John Coltrane: 1
This Years Model - Elvis Costello and the Attractions: 1
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs - Derek and the Dominos: 1
Dire Straits - Dire Straits: 1
The Doors - The Doors: 1
Brining It All Back Home - Bob Dylan: 1
Liege and Lief - Fairport Convention: 1
I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You - Aretha Franklin: 1
Repeater - Fugazi: 1
Appetite for Destruction - Guns n' Roses: 1
Are You Experienced? - The Jimi Hendrix Experience:3
Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division: 2
Autobahn - Kraftwerk: 1
Led Zeppelin [I] - Led Zeppelin: 1
John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band - John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band: 1
Forever Changes - Love: 2
Blue - Joni Mitchell: 1
Illmatic - Nas: 1
Low-Life - New Order: 1
(What's the Story) Morning Glory? - Oasis: 2
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain - Pavement: 1
Elvis Presley - Elvis Presley: 1
Screamadelica - Primal Scream: 1
The Fat of the Land - The Prodigy: 1
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - Public Enemy: 1
Kid A - Radiohead: 1
The Ramones - The Ramones: 1
Otis Blue - Otis Redding: 1
Sticky Fingers - The Rolling Stones: 1
Sister - Sonic Youth: 1
Reign in Blood - Slayer: 2
Fresh - Sly and the Family Stone: 1
Ænima - Tool: 1
Electric Warrior - T Rex: 1
Achtung Baby - U.2: 2
The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground: 1
Catch a Fire - The Wailers: 1
The Who Sell Out - The Who: 1
Who's Next - The Who: 1
After the Gold Rush - Neil Young: 1
Odyssey and Oracle - The Zombies: 1
Blood on the Tracks - Bob Dylan: 1
[Aretha Franklin - Lady Soul: 1
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Kanye West: 1
Different Class - Pulp: 1]

The final top albums (top-five rankings place an album above any number of six-through-ten rankings) [updated to show how the three new lists effect the results, and with an additional high-seller (Brothers in Arms) replacing Elvis' Christmas Album, which I later excluded because of its uncertain status as an album (see below)]:

1. Revolver - The Beatles
2. Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys
3. Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan
4. The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses
4. Nevermind - Nirvana
6. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles
7. Blonde on Blonde - Bob Dylan
7. What's Going On - Marvin Gaye
7. Nevermind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols - The Sex Pistols
10. The Velvet Underground and Nico - The Velvet Underground
11. Exile on Main Street - The Rolling Stones
12. The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths
12. Astral Weeks - Van Morrison
14. O.K Computer - Radiohead
15. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars - David Bowie
15. Marquee Moon - Television
16. The Bends - Radiohead
17. Rubber Soul - The Beatles
17. The Clash - The Clash
17. Kind of Blue - Miles Davis
17. Master of Puppets - Metallica
21. The Beatles - The Beatles
22. London Calling - The Clash
23. Is This It - The Strokes
24. Hunky Dory - David Bowie
25. Thriller - Michael Jackson
25. Purple Rain - Prince

Plus a few top sellers to get close to 50:
27. Led Zeppelin [IV] - Led Zeppelin
28. Back in Black - A.C/ D.C
29. Rumours - Fleetwood Mac
30. Boston - Boston
31. Hotel California - The Eagles
32. The Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
33. Born in the U.S.A - Bruce Springsteen
34. Bat Out of Hell - Meat Loaf
35. Abbey Road - The Beatles
36. Led Zeppelin II - Led Zeppelin
37. The Wall - Pink Floyd
38. Houses of the Holy - Led Zeppelin
39. The Stranger - Billy Joel
40. Tapestry - Carole King
41. Pyromania - Def Leppard
42. Can't Slow Down - Lionel Richie
43. Like a Virgin - Madonna
44. 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) - Van Halen
45. Van Halen - Van Halen
46. Eliminator - Z.Z Top

From the list of U.K top sellers...
47. Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel
48. Brothers in Arms - Dire Straits

And from U.S sellers in the period, 1985-1994...
49. Appetite for Destruction - Guns n' Roses
50. The Joshua Tree - U.2.

The Entertainment Weekly list has the Goldberg Variations (the transcription at Rocklist doesn't note which recording, if any, the listmakers referred to) and four compilations not included here. The Guardian had one compilation: Robert Johnson's King of the Delta Blues Singers. However, we should at least note those artists that have compilations in high-selling positions, but which do not have high-selling studio albums or high-ranking critics' favorites: Elton John, Journey, The Steve Miller Band, Kenny Rogers, Aerosmith, James Taylor, Bob Marley, The Doobie Brothers, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Patsy Cline; and in the U K, Queen and ABBA.

23 February: [updated]
A chronological list of the informal canon of music albums made from: first, the top ten of lists of ranked albums, made by music publications dating back to 1974; second, top-selling albums in the U S and the U K; and third, additions made by me based upon the albums that had already made the list, in order to fill in obvious gaps [the additions I made at the 21 February, 2 April, 8 April, 9 April, 10 April, and 11 April posts are now part of the list posted on 31 October].

I've further removed Elvis' Christmas Album, since its status as an album of original material is slightly hampered in that four of the twelve tracks had been released earlier in 1957 as an E.P called Peace in the Valley, and those tracks were removed from the later, "budget" version of the album, replaced by newer tracks. The eight Christmas-themed tracks featured on all versions of the album could be considered an E.P, being less than 20 minutes in length. Either way, and especially given its secondary place in Presley's oeuvre, I'm excluding it now.

1955:
In the Wee Small Hours - Frank Sinatra

1956:
Elvis Presley - Elvis Presley

1959:
Kind of Blue - Miles Davis

1960:
Ride This Train - Johnny Cash

1963:
Live at the Apollo - James Brown

1964
The Beatles - Meet the Beatles

1965:
Rubber Soul - The Beatles
Bringing It All Back Home - Bob Dylan
Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan
Otis Blue - Otis Redding

1966:
Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys
Revolver - The Beatles
Blonde on Blonde - Bob Dylan
Meditations - John Coltrane

1967:
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles
The Doors - The Doors
I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You - Aretha Franklin
Are You Experienced? - The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Forever Changes - Love
The Velvet Underground and Nico - The Velvet Underground
The Who Sell Out - The Who

1968:
Music From Big Pink - The Band
The Beatles - The Beatles
Lady Soul - Aretha Franklin
Electric Ladyland - The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Astral Weeks - Van Morrison
Beggars Banquet - The Rolling Stones
Odyssey and Oracle - The Zombies

1969:
The Band - The Band
Abbey Road - The Beatles
Liege and Lief - Fairport Convention
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin II - Led Zeppelin
Let It Bleed - The Rolling Stones
The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground

1970:
Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath
Sex Machine - James Brown
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs - Derek and the Dominos
John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band
Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel
Fun House - The Stooges
After the Gold Rush - Neil Young

1971:
Hunky Dory - David Bowie
What's Going On - Marvin Gaye
Tapestry - Carole King
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin
Blue - Joni Mitchell
Sticky Fingers - The Rolling Stones
Electric Warrior - T Rex
Who's Next - The Who

1972:
Vol. 4 - Black Sabbath
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars - David Bowie
Transformer - Lou Reed
Exile on Main St. - The Rolling Stones

1973:
Houses of the Holy - Led Zeppelin
The Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
Fresh - Sly and the Family Stone
Catch a Fire - The Wailers

1974:
Autobahn - Kraftwerk
Phases and Stages - Willie Nelson

1975:
Horses - Patti Smith

1976:
Boston - Boston
Hotel California - The Eagles
Destroyer - Kiss
The Ramones - The Ramaones

1977:
The Clash - The Clash
Rumours - Fleetwood Mac
The Stranger - Billy Joel
Trans-Europe Express - Kraftwerk
Bat Out of Hell - Meat Loaf
Lust for Life - Iggy Pop
Nevermind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols - The Sex Pistols
Marquee Moon - Television

1978:
This Years Model - Elvis Costello and the Attractions
Dire Straits - Dire Straits
Darkness on the Edge of Town - Bruce Springsteen
Van Halen - Van Halen

1979:
London Calling - The Clash
Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division
The Wall - Pink Floyd

1980:
Back in Black - A.C/ D.C
Heathen Earth - Throbbing Gristle

1982:
Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen
Thriller - Michael Jackson

1983:
Pyromania - Def Leppard
Can't Slow Down - Lionel Richie
Swordfishtrombones - Tom Waits
Eliminator - Z.Z Top

1984:
Like a Virgin - Madonna
Purple Rain - Prince and the Revolution
Born in the U.S.A - Bruce Springsteen
1984 (MCMLXXXIV) - Van Halen

1985:
[Brothers in Arms - Dire Straits]
Low-Life - New Order

1986:
Master of Puppets - Metallica
Graceland - Paul Simon
Reign in Blood - Slayer
The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths

1987:
Appetite for Destruction - Guns n' Roses
Sister - Sonic Youth
The Joshua Tree - U.2

1988:
Straight Outta Compton - N.W.A
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - Public Enemy

1989:
Doolittle - The Pixies
The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses

1990:
Repeater - Fugazi

1991:
Nevermind - Nirvana
Screamadelica -Primal Scream
Achtung Baby - U.2

1992:
Dirt - Alice in Chains
Angel Dust - Faith No More
Automatic for the People - R.E.M

1993:
In Utero - Nirvana

1994:
Dookie - Green Day
Illmatic - Nas
Definitely Maybe - Oasis
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain - Pavement

1995:
(What's the Story) Morning Glory? - Oasis
[Different Class - Pulp]
The Bends - Radiohead

1996:
If You're Feeling Sinister - Belle and Sebastian
Roots - Sepultura
Ænima - Tool

1997:
The Boatman's Call - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
The Fat of the Land - The Prodigy
O K Computer - Radiohead

2000:
The Marshall Mathers L.P - Eminem
Kid A - Radiohead

2001:
Is This It - The Strokes

[2010:
Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy]

--

[Continuing the construction of a Canon of Rock as seen above, I suppose I let the daily demand of the Macroscopic blog encourage me to make my own additions, attempting to compensate for the apparent randomness of the contents of the critics' list. Here goes...]

--

21 February: [revised and updated]
While any serious listener, music artist, journalist, musicologist, etc., could come up with his own list of favorites (but many don't unless prompted—modesty I don't recommend in general, even if the lack of form it takes in this case is appreciated), what if we were to accept this informal canon constructed from critics' list and sales charts? Within the basic guidelines established by the artists selected there, what's missing?

- Highway to Hell - A C/D C. You've got an album with Brian Johnson, you need one with Bon Scott. Differing Australian and international versions of their early albums and the higher sales of Highway lead me to chose that one.

- Today!; Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) - The Beach Boys. So Pet Sounds is the second-greatest album, but the albums that laid the groundwork for it rarely makes any lists, somewhat understandably—they're a bit uneven, with some filler.

- Please Please Me; A Hard Day's Night; Beatles for Sale - The Beatles. Their music needs to be appreciated in its early years to embrace where they went with it; sure, the U S album Meet the Beatles is extremely important historically, but overall the U K albums were sequenced better. A Hard Day's Night was all originals, no covers--a big deal at the time; Beatles for Sale is my choice for their early peak.

- Paranoid, Master of Reality, and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath - Black Sabbath. If you've got the first and fourth albums, you need the second, third, and fifth; arguably the most influential of all Rock bands, though that influence is often regrettable (not their fault).

- Station to Station; Low - David Bowie. Both are required to accompany Hunky and Ziggy.

- Live at the Apollo, Volume II; The Payback - James Brown. Keep the music going after Live at the Apollo and Sex Machine.

- Johnny Cash Sings the Ballads of the True West; At Folsom Prison; At San Quentin - Johnny Cash. Just listening to Ride This Train isn't going to get you far...

- Your Funeral... My Trial - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. You absolutely must listen to early Bad Seeds before later albums like The Boatman's Call.

- Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music - Ray Charles. Surprising not to see this.

- A Love Supreme - John Coltrane. Given that this album, like Kind of Blue, is one of those Jazz works Rock scribes have decided you are allowed to listen to, I'm very surprised it didn't any publication's top ten.

- Déjà Vu - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. A defining album for millions upon millions of people at the time; to me, it holds up well.

- Brothers in Arms - Dire Straits. Very high on the list of U K top sellers, and just below our cut-off point for U S top sellers, it's definitely better than their first album; many of their early fans would probably strong disagree. [This album was later added to the original 50.]

- The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan. As with Bowie's Low, there are probably plenty of lists out there with this album on them, they just aren't included here. Easily the album to start with when it comes to Dylan's Folk period.

- Axis: Bold as Love - The Jimi Hendrix Experience. If the other two Experience albums make the cut, I don't see any reason why this one doesn't; it hasn't several Hendrix classics: 'Spanish Castle Magic', 'Little Wing', 'If 6 Was 9', and 'Castles Made of Sand'.

- Loveless - My Bloody Valentine. If Pitchfork (which once proclaimed this the best album of the 1990's) and a few other younger publications did some all-time lists, this album would easily get some top-ten votes.

- Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd. At least as good as The Wall.

- The Idiot - Iggy Pop. Goes well with Lust for Life, obviously enough.

- Different Class - Pulp. British publications got the Stones Roses' eponymous debut so high in the list, but not this album? [This album made the top ten of one of the two lists added since 2013.]

- Murmur - R E M. I'm prone to liking Automatic for the People better, but overall Murmur gets higher accolades—yet didn't make any of our top tens.

- Raising Hell - Run-D M C. Let's be blunt: if you put Eminem ahead of this, you're dumb.

- Arise - Sepultura. Seems like an appropriate companion to Roots.

- Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme - Simon and Garfunkel; Still Crazy After All These Years - Paul Simon. The latter is arguably the best choice of Simon's early years, needed to accompany Graceland. The former helps not to slight the duo.

- Songs for Swingin' Lovers - Frank Sinatra. The counterpart to In the Wee Small Hours.

- Stand! - Sly and the Family Stone. Earlier standard to accompany Fresh.

- Daydream Nation - Sonic Youth. See note on My Bloody Valentine.

- Born to Run; The River - Bruce Springsteen. If you're going to listen to Darkness on the Edge of Town, Nebraska, and Born in the U S A, you've got to listen to these two too.

- Raw Power - Iggy and the Stooges. As with Low, this is an obvious one.

- Tres Hombres and Degüello - Z Z Top. How they got to Eliminator...

- Burnin' - The Wailers. The other early classic besides Catch a Fire.

- Rain Dogs - Tom Waits. Slightly better than Swordfishtrombones.

- My Generation, Tommy, and Quadrophenia. Necessary if you're going to delve into The Who Sell Out and Who's Next.

- Talking Book and Innervisions - Stevie Wonder. Since Songs in the Key of Life is often listed as a best-seller because the R I A A counts it twice, we should include a Wonder album or two; also note the many Grammy Album of the Year awards he won—another crucial sign of mainstream praise.

- Tonight's the Night - Neil Young. If you're going to have After the Gold Rush...

27 February:
Having already listed some artists with compilations, but not studio albums, which have sold more than ten million copies in the U S, and who also did not place in the top ten of any of the critics' lists, we should consider artists that we would expect to make critics' lists—and indeed do make many of the lists, just not high enough to make our aggregated list. Plus those artists that rank high on the R I A A's list of highest-selling artists but which have neither a studio album or compilation with more than ten million sales. Two glaring omissions, Frank Zappa and George Clinton, being very prolific, probably have an excess of great albums. While we could easily choose a few titles for newcomers to listen to (Maggot Brain, Mothership Connection, Freak Out, Hot Rats), we can also imagine what might have happened in the creation of an all-time list to cause these two to be excluded. Say a magazine polls ten of its writers, requesting a list of fifty albums. Two of them could have named One Nation Under a Groove, or Lumpy Gravy, one could say Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome, or Over-Nite Sensation, and another Free Your Ass... And Your Mind Will Follow, or Uncle Meat. The result would be that none of those albums would make the magazine's top ten. A similar situation emerges with artists about whom most would agree reached a peak of artistry and popularity during a certain period, and which released several albums of similar caliber during that period. In other words, how did Kerrang! decide that Black Sabbath's Vol. 4 should be heard before Paranoid or Master of Reality? We've seen this problem already with the albums Stevie Wonder released, 1972-6.

First, those with compilations selling more than ten million copies, whom I noted before:
Aerosmith
Patsy Cline
The Doobie Brothers
Elton John
Journey
Bob Marley
The Steve Miller Band
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Kenny Rogers
James Taylor;

and from the U K top sellers: Queen and ABBA.

Critics' favorites that have not made our list yet--focusing, as before, on the period, 1955-1985. The selections are either my own or come from the 10-through-50 positions (if applicable) in the same critics' lists used for previous posts, except the Kerrang! lists.
The Allman Brothers Band
Andrew W K
[Aphex Twin]
Joan Baez
[The Beastie Boys]
Harry Belafonte
Tony Bennett
Chuck Berry
[Big Daddy Kane]
Big Star
[Mary J Blige]
[Blur]
Booker T and the M G's
[Jeff Buckley]
Kate Bush
The Byrds
Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band
The Cars
[Vic Chesnutt]
Chic
Leonard Cohen
Coldplay
Shirley Collins
Alice Cooper
Cream
The Cure
Deep Purple
[De la Soul]
[Depeche Mode]
Derek and the Dominoes
Dexys Midnight Runners
Bo Diddley
[Dr. Dre]
Fats Domino
Lee Dorsey
[Youssou N'Dour]
Duran Duran
Ian Dury
Echo and the Bunnymen
Duke Ellington
Brian Eno
John Fahey
Fairport Convention
The Fall
Charlie Feathers
Ella Fitzgerald
The Flying Burrito Bros.
Funkadelic
Peter Gabriel
Gang of Four
The Go-Betweens
The Grateful Dead
Al Green
Merle Haggard
Bill Haley and the Comets
Herbie Hancock [incl. V S O P]
Isaac Hayes
Robyn Hitchcock
Buddy Holly
Howlin' Wolf
The Human League
Hüsker Dü
The Impressions
Iron Maiden
Etta James
Japan
Jefferson Airplane
Waylon Jennings
[The Jesus and Mary Chain]
Jethro Tull
Robert Johnson
Judas Priest
B B King
King Crimson
The Kinks
Kiss
[K D Lang]
[L F O]
Little Richard
Loretta Lynn
[The Magnetic Fields]
[Manic Street Preachers]
[Massive Attack]
Curtis Mayfield
The M C5
[George Michael]
Minor Threat
The Minutemen
Moby Grape
The Modern Lovers
Thelonious Monk
The Moody Blues
Giorgio Moroder
Motörhead
Fred Neil
The New York Dolls
Harry Nilsson
[Nine Inch Nails]
[Sinéad O'Connor]
[The Orb]
Augustus Pablo
Gram Parsons
Dolly Parton
Pet Shop Boys
Parliament
[Portishead]
[Prefab Sprout]
The Pretenders
[Primal Scream]
Public Image Ltd.
The Raincoats
The Replacements
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
Diana Ross and the Supremes
Roxy Music
Santana [of course, his later album Supernatural had been omitted from our list; so he's added here]
Pete Seeger
Siouxsie and the Banshees
[Slint]
The Soft Machine
The Specials
The Spice Girls
[Spiritualized]
Dusty Springfield
Steely Dan
The Streets
[Suede]
Suicide
Swans
Talking Heads
The Temptations
The 13th Floor Elevators
Traffic
T Rex
[Underworld]
[The Verve]
Scott Walker
Muddy Waters
[Wilco]
Hank Williams
Bobby Womack
Yes
Frank Zappa

From the R I A A list of highest-selling artists, I've picked those with more than twenty million in total sales, and whose careers at least began before 1985, and those with compilations that have sold eight-nine million copies.
Alabama
The Bee Gees
[Mary J Blige]
[Michael Bolton]
[Brooks and Dunn]
Jimmy Buffett
The Carpenters
Kenny Chesney
Chicago
Eric Clapton [his Unplugged ranks among the top-selling albums, but falls into the 1985-1994 purgatory]
Phil Collins [No Jacket Required also a top seller released in the '85-'94 period]
Creedence Clearwater Revival
John Denver
Neil Diamond
Earth, Wind and Fire
Enya
Foreigner
Genesis
[Vince Gill]
Heart
Faith Hill
Alan Jackson
Janet Jackson
Jay-Z
Toby Keith
R Kelly
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Barry Manilow
Mannheim Steamroller
The Dave Matthews Band
[Reba McEntire]
Tim McGraw
John Mellencamp
Mötley Crüe
Nelly
Nickelback
Ozzy Osbourne
OutKast
The Police
[Red Hot Chili Peppers]
R E O Speedwagon
Linda Ronstadt
Rush
Sade
Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
Rod Stewart
George Strait
Barbara Streisand
[T L C]
2 Pac
Luther Vandross

2 April:
The key albums from those artists who've made our list because they either have released compilations with more than eight million copies sold in the U S or have registered overall album sales of more than 20 million. Among those not already excluded (as seen on the 27 February post), Phil Collins is now excluded. As already noted, No Jacket Required comes from the 1985-1994 period from which most top sellers are being omitted. Furthermore, the two prior solo albums don't stand apart enough from the Genesis albums of the time. Indeed, I'd like to include a Genesis album from the post-Peter Gabriel era, but none of the albums have attained status as exemplary (either by commercial or critical standards) or epitomical of that period of the band. {Further additions made in 2016 are in braces like these.}

ABBA - Arrival{; The Album}
Aerosmith - Toys in the Attic; Rocks
Alabama - Mountain Music
The Bee Gees - Main Course; Children of the World
Jimmy Buffett - Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes
The Carpenters - A Song for You
Chicago - Chicago [II]
Eric Clapton - 461 Ocean Boulevard; Slowhand
Patsy Cline - Showcase
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bayou Country; Green River; Willy and the Poor Boys; Cosmo's Factory
John Denver - Rocky Mountain High; Back Home Again
Neil Diamond - Hot August Night
Earth, Wind and Fire - That's the Way of the World
The Doobie Brothers - Toulouse Street; The Captain and Me
Enya - Watermark
Foreigner - 4
Genesis - {Foxtrot;} Selling England by the Pound; The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
Heart - Heart
Elton John - Tumbleweed Connection; Madman Across the Water; Goodbye Yellow Brick Road; Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy
Journey - Escape
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd; Second Helping
Barry Manilow - Live
Mannheim Steamroller - Fresh Aire
Bob Marley and the Wailers - Natty Dread; Rastaman Vibration; Exodus
John Mellencamp - Scarecrow
The Steve Miller Band - Fly Like an Eagle
Mötley Crüe - Girls, Girls, Girls; Dr. Feelgood
Ozzy Osbourne - Blizzard of Ozz
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Damn the Torpedoes; Tom Petty - Full Moon Fever
The Police - Synchronicity
Queen - Sheer Heart Attack; A Night at the Opera
R E O Speedwagon - Hi Infidelity
Kenny Rogers - The Gambler
Linda Ronstadt - Heart Like a Wheel; Simple Dreams
Rush - {2112; }Moving Pictures
Sade - Diamond Life
Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band - Night Moves
Rod Stewart - Gasoline Alley; Every Picture Tells a Story; A Night on the Town
George Strait - Strait From the Heart
Barbara Streisand - The Barbara Streisand Album; People
James Taylor - Sweet Baby James
Luther Vandross - Never Too Much

8 April:
The key albums for artists listed in the 27 February post: that is, those either in our critics' lists at nos. 20-50 or artists I've added because one would expect them to be on such lists; or perhaps we wouldn't expect them to be but they absolutely should be. For now, A through E (Note that the first half, roughly, of Duke Ellington's career is not represented because this list is only of studio and live albums of previously-unreleased material--or at least almost entirely previously-unreleased material because in many instances the first single of an album is released before the album itself; similarly, Louis Armstrong is not on this list--and again, we've only included Jazz artists because of unfortunate tendency of album listmakers to include a few token Jazz albums and in rarer cases a few token Classical and avant-garde albums): {Further additions made in 2016 are in braces like these:}

The Allman Brothers Band - The Allman Brothers Band; Idlewild South; Live at Fillmore East; Eat a Peach
Joan Baez - Joan Baez; In Concert{; Joan; Blessed Are...}; Diamonds and Rust
Harry Belafonte - Calypso; At Carnegie Hall
Tony Bennett - I Left My Heart in San Francisco; I Wanna Be Around...; [Tony Bennett/ Count Basie and His Orchestra] In Person!; Bennett and Basie Strike Up the Band
Big Star - Radio City; Third
Booker T and the M G's - Green Onions; Melting Pot
Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
The Byrds - Turn! Turn! Turn!; The Notorious Byrd Brothers
Captain Beefheart - [Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band] Trout Mask Replica; [Beefheart] Bat Chain Puller
The Cars - The Cars
Chic - C'Est Chic; Risqué
Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen; Songs From a Room; Songs of Love and Hate
Shirley Collins - [Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band] No Roses
Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies; Welcome to My Nightmare
Cream - Disraeli Gears
The Cure - {Faith; }Pornography; The Head on the Door{; Disintegration}
Deep Purple - Deep Purple in Rock; Fireball; Machine Head
Depeche Mode - Violator
Derek and the Dominoes - Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
Dexys Midnight Runners - Too-Rae-Ay
Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley; Go Bo Diddley; Have Guitar Will Travel
Fats Domino - Carry On Rockin'; This Is Fats
The Doors - The Doors; L A Women
Lee Dorsey - Yes We Can
Youssou N'Dour - Immigrés; Set
Duran Duran - Duran Duran; Rio
Ian Dury - New Boots and Panties!!
Echo and the Bunnymen - Heaven Up Here{; Ocean Rain}
Duke Ellington - Ellington Uptown; Ellington at Newport; The Far East Suite
Brian Eno - [Eno] Here Comes the Warm Jets; [Eno] Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy); [Eno] Another Green World; Discreet Music{; Ambient 1: Music for Airports}

9 April:
Critics' darlings' albums, F-K, except for Charlie Feathers and Robert Johnson (the latter of course did not make studio albums, the former had a few studio albums but his singles receive higher accolades). Also, Billy Haley and the Comets would have one album (Shake Rattle and Roll) and B B King a second (Singin' the Blues) if we were including albums of which at least a majority of the tracks had been released as singles:

John Fahey - Blind Joe Death [final, 1967 version]; America
Fairport Convention - {What We Did on Our Holidays; }Unhalfbricking{; Liege and Lief}
The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour; This Nation's Saving Grace
Ella Fitzgerald - Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook; Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Songbook; Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook; Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Songbook; Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook
The Flying Burrito Bros. - The Gilded Palace of Sin
Funkadelic - Maggot Brain; One Nation Under a Groove
Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel [3]; Peter Gabriel [4]; So
Gang of Four - Entertainment!
The Go-Betweens - Before Hollywood
The Grateful Dead - Anthem of the Sun; American Beauty; Workingman's Dead; Live/ Dead; Europe '72{; Wake of the Flood}
Al Green - Let's Stay Together; Call Me
Merle Haggard - A Portrait of Merle Haggard; [Merle Haggard and the Strangers] Hag
Herbie Hancock - Headhunters
Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul; Black Moses
Robyn Hitchcock - I Often Dream of Trains; [Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians] Fegmania!
Buddy Holly - Buddy Holly; [The Crickets] The "Chirping" Crickets
The Human League - Dare
Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade; New Day Rising; Flip Your Wig
The Impressions - The Impressions
Etta James - At Last!; Etta James Rocks the House; Tell Mama
Japan - Gentlemen Take Polaroids; Tin Drum
Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow; Volunteers
Waylon Jennings - Honky Tonk Heroes; Dreaming My Dreams
Jethro Tull - Aqualung; Thick as a Brick
Judas Priest - Stained Class; British Steel
B B King - Live at the Regal
King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King; Larks' Tongue in Aspic
The Kinks - Something Else by the Kinks; The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society; Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)
Kiss - Alive!; Destroyer

10 April:
L-P:

Little Richard - Here's Little Richard
Loretta Lynn - Don't Come Home a Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind); Coal Miner's Daughter
Curtis Mayfield - Curtis; Superfly; There's No Place Like America Today
The M C 5 - Back in the U S A
Minor Threat - Out of Step
The Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime
Moby Grape - Moby Grape
The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers
Thelonious Monk - Brilliant Corners; Monk's Moods{; Monk's Dream}
The Moody Blues - Days of Future Passed; In Search of the Lost Chord; On the Threshold of a Dream
Giorgio Moroder - From Here to Eternity
Motörhead - Overkill; Ace of Spades
Fred Neil - Fred Neil
Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson
The New York Dolls - The New York Dolls
Augustus Pablo - East of the River Nile; King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown
Parliament - Mothership Connection
Gram Parsons - G P
Dolly Parton - Just Because I'm a Woman; Coat of Many Colors; Heartbreaker
The Pet Shop Boys - Actually
The Pretenders - The Pretenders; Learning to Crawl
Public Image Ltd. - Metal Box

11 April:
Q-Z (Note that both the Temptations and the Supremes have crucial albums from the 1960's that essentially served as studio albums but which consisted almost entirely of previously-released singles--namely, The Temptin' Temptations and the Supremes's Where Did Our Love Go; the same situation pertains to early albums by Chuck Berry [After School Session, 1957; One Dozen Berrys, 1958; Chuck Berry Is on Top, 1959], Bo Diddley [self-titled, 1958], Howlin' Wolf [Moanin' in the Moonlight; self-titled, 1962], and Muddy Waters [The Real Folk Blues; Down on Stovall's Plantation]): {Further additions made in 2016 are in braces like these:}

The Raincoats - The Raincoats; Odyshape
The Replacements - Let It Be; Tim
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - [The Miracles] Hi... We're the Miracles; Going to a Go-Go; Make It Happen; [Smokey Robinson] A Quiet Storm
Diana Ross and the Supremes - [The Supremes] The Supremes Sing Holland-Dozier-Holland; [Diana Ross] diana
Roxy Music - Roxy Music; For Your Pleasure; Country Life; Siren
{Todd Rundgren - Something/ Anything?; A Wizard, a True Star}
Santana - Abraxas{; Santana III}
Pete Seeger - [The Weavers] The Weavers at Carnegie Hall; American Favorite Ballads [Vol. 1]
Siouxsie and the Banshees - The Scream; Juju
The Soft Boys - Underwater Moonlight
The Soft Machine - The Soft Machine; Third
The Specials - The Specials
Dusty Springfield - Stay Awhile/ I Only Want to Be With You; Dusty in Memphis
Steely Dan - Can't Buy a Thrill; Pretzel Logic{; Countdown to Ecstasy}
Suicide - Suicide; Alan Vega/ Martin Rev
Swans - Children of God; Soundtracks for the Blind
Talking Heads - 77; {More Songs About Buildings and Food; Fear of Music;} Remain in Light{; Speaking in Tongues}
The Temptations - The Temptations Sing Smokey; With a Lot o' Soul; Cloud Nine; Sky's the Limit; All Directions
The 13th Floor Elevators - The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators; Easter Everywhere
Traffic - Traffic; The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys
T Rex - T Rex; Electric Warrior; Slider
Scott Walker - Scott 3; Scott 4; Tilt
Muddy Waters - At Newport 1960; Hard Again
Bobby Womack - Understanding; The Facts of Life
Yes - Fragile; Close to the Edge{; Tales From Topgraphic Oceans}
Frank Zappa - Freak Out; Lumpy Gravy; Hot Rats; Over-Nite Sensation; Zoot Allures

[So much more to add, especially from the 1970's hey day of Rock and artists whose focus was always 45s, not albums, mostly from 1940's and '50's: Hasil Adkins; Amon Düül II; Bad Brains; Jeff Beck; Bobby Blue Bland; Blood, Sweat and Tears; Arthur Brown; Cabaret Voltaire; Can; The Clean; The Clovers; Cluster; The Coasters; Dick Dale; Sandy Denny; Dinosaur Jr.; Willie Dixon; The Drifters; The Electric Light Orchestra; Emerson, Lake and Palmer; Faust; The Feelies; The Four Tops; Buddy Guy; The Ink Spots; Iron Butterfly; Rick James; Gladys Knight and the Pips; Little Anthony and the Imperials; The Lovin' Spoonful; Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers; The Mamas and the Papas; Meat Puppets; Mission of Burma; The O'Jays; The Orioles; The Alan Parsons Project; The Pentangle; Carl Perkins; The Platters; The Pretty Things; Procol Harum; The Righteous Brothers; Sebadoh; Spirit; Steppenwolf; Styx; Tangerine Dream; 10cc; Peter Tosh; Toto; The Ventures; Billy Ward and His Dominoes; Johnny Guitar Watson; Barry White; Lucinda Williams; Link Wray; X; X T C—do we realize the pointlessness of this endeavor yet?]-->