Every album I’ve ever encountered seems to have a mixture of bangers and one or more meh or outright flops. It’s easier than ever to skip over the tracks now, but as the question asks: what’s is, in your opinion, the perfect album, or does one/can one even exist?
I feel like the perfect album can exist for anyone. Sometimes an album hits just right at a specific time in your life. It becomes the background soundtrack for your day to day life. For me, it is The Postal Service’s Give Up. There are so many reasons I love that album and to me there are no throwaway songs. It feels altogether ephemeral for me.
So yeah, it’s highly subjective, but I think it’s possible for all of us to experience music on this level. I hope you one day experience it, OP.
Heh. For me, in college in the early 90s, nirvana, green day, Soundgarden, etc. But yeah, there’s always one that doesn’t quite seem to fit. Lol
No, but there can be perfect albums for an individual.
For me, there’s a decent number. I tend to have broad taste in music, so I have the advantage of genre access in this kind of thing.
Master of Puppets, Metallica, was the first perfect album I ran across. Not a single track I wanted to skip, and it’s still pretty much impossible for me to make a playlist that includes Metallica that doesn’t have the entire album on it. For years, I would play it to go to sleep to, my tape deck could auto flip, so I would just dub a few from the vinyl (showing my age here lol) and use them for that.
Iron Maiden’s Somewhere in Time is another.
Adele, 21 is brilliant from front to back.
Tracy Chapman, New Beginning is a fucking masterpiece.
Springsteen’s Born in the USA is perfect.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, the album by that name is a great one.
Depeche Mode, Violator. There’s not a stinker on it.
Guns & Roses, Appetite for Destruction was and is a perfect album for sure.
John Lennon did it with Imagine, though barely; there are a couple of tracks that aren’t as good as the rest, but they’re still amazing overall.
Linkin Park could have two; One More Light is definitely perfect in my ears, and hybrid theory is right there with it, though I don’t mind skipping a couple of tracks off of HT sometimes.
Nappy Roots managed a perfect hip-hop album (which isn’t actually easy with me) in Watermelon, Chicken and Grits. Sublimely perfect southern rap. Every track a winner.
Biggie did Ready to Die, and I’d argue it’s the second best hip-hop album of all time.
The greatest is Run-DMC with Raising Hell. How can you top that album as a whole? Every track a banger, every rhyme a killer.
The list could go on. Obviously, I tend to lean into rock, metal, and hip-hop as my most listened genres, but there’s at least one album for me in almost any genre. I’m sure if I delved deeper in some, I would find more.
I’ve gone though a few of these lol. We must be the same age. Ish.
Plenty. There are literally hundreds of albums in my collection that I’d consider “perfect,” the first one I ever realized as one was Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the most recent probably being Hellfire by Black Midi. What type of music do you listen to? I can try to give some more relevant suggestions for you based on that.
Bowie also had Man Who Sold the World and Station to Station.
Me, I move between genres, so on the one hand I’ll do alternative (nevermind, garbage 2.0), then I’ll flip to crossover classical (bocelli, always), some metal/ rock, sometimes to OST or anime. Just looking for suggestions, or to spark discussion.
I was wondering the same thing and then I found Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon.
So the answer is yes, my perfect album exists.
And then I found Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here, and I realized two perfect albums exist for me, so far
Surprised nobody mentioned Rumors by Fleetwood Mac.
This album is one of the greatest album OAT in my book, like top 5. A perfect album with no dulls, one of the best exemples of what a 10/10 is.
It’s only gets mentioned every time someone asks this question.
Looks like I’ve become ‘that guy’
lol
It’s a great album but there is one song on it that is pretty mid, Oh Daddy. I don’t think it can be called the perfect album
I disagree. I know that one’s not as typical/upbeat as much of their other stuff, but I think it carries just as much weight and is a powerful song that helps complete the album.
Giving it a listen! Thanks for the recommendation.
of course!
Queen - A kind of Magic
Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill
Jagged Little Pill is the first album that comes to mind for this question, but if I’m honest I’d skip the track “Perfect”.
Paul Simon - Graceland is utterly unique and every track is a masterpiece
The same can be said for Pink Floyd - The Wall
Perfect is in the eyes (or ears, in this case) of the beholder. A song can sound like the best thing you’ve ever heard, and you could make an entire album out of it, but the pursuit of perfection is futile.
Ask any artist if they’ve ever released a perfect album, there will not be a “yes”. Every artist is keenly aware of their own faults/shortcomings and end up thinking about what tracks they would have done better. You could have someone make music for a thousand years and they’d still think of something else they could have done the next day. And even then, what sounds better to an artist may not sound better to their listeners, so perfection is simply not worth wasting brain space over.
Good point. Let me ask then: which is your perfect album?
As other have said, it’s subjective, but here are some albums I’d consider perfect:
- R.E.M. - Murmur, Reckoning, Lifes Rich Pageant, Automatic for the Prople
- Orbital - In Sides
- Marvin Gaye - What’s Going On
- Leftfield - Leftism
- Beatles - Abbey Road, Sgt Pepper
- Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
- Underworld - Second Toughest in the Infants
- Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
- Massive Attack - Blue Lines
- John Coltrane - Blue Train
- Velvet Underground - Velvet Underground and Nico
- Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
- Nas - Illmatic
- Portishead - Dummy, Portishead
- Chemical Brothers - Exit Planet Dusr
- Tricky - Maxinquaye
- Jim White - The Mysterious Tale of How I Shouted Wrong-Eyed Jeaus
Blue Lines over Mezzanine? I usually mention Mezzanine in threads like this because the fact it was released in 1998 really doesn’t come across at all.
Blue Lines over Mezzanine?
Every day of the week - don’t get me wrong, Mezzanine is great, but for me Blue Lines is absolute perfection :-)
Pink Floyd: the dark side of the moon
F♯ A♯ ∞ by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Eve 6 's debut album.
Jesus Nightlight is the only speedbump, but that’s mostly due to placement. If it was the closing track, it would have been a totally different experience.
Disregarding that one song being in an inopportune position, it’s the only perfect album I know of.
I need to learn to listen to albums as a whole, not as a collection of tracks. But that’s just me.
Name the genre and I’ll give you one.
Edit: not like make the album, I’ll just tell you about one
Alternative/ grunge.
Or movie OST.
Nirvana unplugged in new York
Eh… the best stuff on their unplugged set was the covers. Bowie and Meat Puppets tracks. Hard to give an album a “best of its kind” designation when the best tracks are covers
That’s a weird qualifier. The album is perfect. The question wasn’t “is it perfect if you omit cover songs?”
Alt rock is broad, but if we’re going with grunge, I’d say Nevermind, although purists will say that’s not totally grunge. You run into similar issues with Ten. Both albums are insanely good start to finish though.
In terms of movies, Bernard Hermann or Ennio Moriconne. Both had some bombs and also some bomb ass stuff. When they were on point they were amazing.
Both Ten and Nevermind are, for me at least, perfect albums. In fact, Ten is the first one I thought of when I read the thread title.
When it comes to soundtracks, Moriconne’s “The Mission” is also an example of perfection for me.
movie OST
I find Arrival’s soundtrack by Johann Johannsson pretty much what you would consider a perfect album. All tracks are great. Obviously it’s a matter of taste at the end of the day.
Yeah. Very atmospheric iirc. Never thought to pick it up - will give it a listen.
Lord of the Rings OST by Howard Shore
Acid jazz
I think TBNH by The Brand New Heavies may only have a less than optimal track but other than that it’s absolutely fire
20 Jazz Funk Greats
Uhh… Are we thinking of same album?
I mean, I just googled it to double check and only one thing came up
Throbbing Gristle isn’t the first name that comes to my mind when someone says acid jazz. I like the idea of this person putting it on expecting Brand New Heavies and getting atonal noise.
P. Orridge is rolling in their grave… but like happy rolling
Do deep house but deep house for somebody who normally likes folk Punk
Tool – 10,000 Days
Oh yeah that one’s a good one
Let It Be by The Replacements
