SPIN's Top 125 Albums of the Past 25 Years

so "best" means "most influential" now?

and also if "best" and "most influential" are the same thing, why is the Achtung Baby review all about how everything since is too whiny?

admittedly i love plenty of the albums on this list, but after the facebook sun chips pop-up they can eat shit and die all the same.

pretty much

hey, spin, the 90's called and they want their web technology back. sheesh, its like trying to look at porn in 1999 with all the popups and crap.

I didn't have any pop-up issues looking at this. Maybe you need to switch to a 21st Century browser.

"Illmatic is one the best three or four best hip-hop albums of all time, period" begins the blurb for the 7th-highest hip hop album on the list. It really amazes me how often disconnects like that occur in big list articles, like the writers and the editors don't even try to sync it all up.

i have no problem w/ this list really, Achtung Baby at #1 is a cool novel pick and emblematic of a lot of different stuff since then.

i have never understood the love for Achtung Baby. i bought it and have listen to it a bunch of time but it does nothing for me whatsoever. i pretty much hate U2 at this point in my life so that might be why, but i did like this band at one point when they were at least good.

really if the whole unspoken agenda/message of this list is "Achtung Baby is the classic 'reinvention' album of modern rock, fuck Kid A," that's kind of awesome imo.

no its not plus to put Head On the Door and not Disintegration on this list just shows how out of touch Spin actually is.

'out of touch' with the world today or like out of touch with the Cure canon? bfd.

"to put Head On the Door and not Disintegration on this list"

They what?!? That makes no sense. Don't get me wrong, I love just about everything The Cure has done, and it's nice to see Head On the Door get some love, but no Disintegration? Really? What metric are they using here? Is Spin in an alternate reality where Disintegration is considered a lesser work to HotD? Bizarre.

Looks like "Is This It" turned into their album of the decade, after coming in around #100 on the last top 100 they did.

I never understood Kid A. I can dig older Animal Collective and Sonic Youth's bizarrest of bizarre, but Kid A seems to be only an album one respects if they're familiar with the rest of Radiohead... as in you're astonished at their progression, or their change of pace. Otherwise, taken as a sole album it just doesn't do very much to impress me.

Jon Dolan, later assessing The Head on the Door's reissue, imagined mopey Robert Smith "ripping the black duct tape off his bedroom windows to let the sun shine in."

Ech.

Also, no Depeche Mode? No Violator?

I never understood Kid A. I can dig older Animal Collective and Sonic Youth's bizarrest of bizarre, but Kid A seems to be only an album one respects if they're familiar with the rest of Radiohead... as in you're astonished at their progression, or their change of pace. Otherwise, taken as a sole album it just doesn't do very much to impress me.

there's an incredible, buzzing energy on kid a, which always impresses me, e.g., the nat'l anthem.

There are certain records that disrupt the space-time continuum of musical history, issuing a pointed warning to anything that follows.

fuck this ^^^

the Loveless review they link to contains just the right mix of praise & criticism that the album deserves

no, no. it's true. once in a great while, a game-changing disc comes along and disrupts the space-time continuum of musical history, issuing a pointed warning to anything that follows.

http://www.counterpoint-music.com/specialties/images/williamhung.jpg

I love this list, but then I am a 40-year-old desperately trying to cling to being a 40-year-old.

s Spin in an alternate reality where Disintegration is considered a lesser work to HotD?

The reality-based community in which I live.

Then again, I prefer my Cure writing three-minute pop songs instead of nine-minute dirges about crocodiles that rhyme "pain' with "rain."

i love head on the door. i played it for the first time in years a couple weeks ago and it sounded AMAZING. like, really good. i figured i would probably play a couple songs and then play something else, but the hooks just keep on a comin'!

Yeah, srsly. The Cure never made a great album but THOTD comes closest to Gothic hook-a-rama than any other besides Wish.

i do kinda wish i had a copy of disintegration though. my cure love was pretty much all 80's and all vinyl. and that was their first album that i didn't go out and buy right away on vinyl. i always think of it as a cd. (plus, sad to say, i wasn't the hugest fan of kissme3x, and wasn't really eagerly anticipating their next album.)

(loved parts of kissme3x, but i thought it was way too long.)

("never enough" was the last thing i loved by them. which makes me a big fan of their first decade. never really listened to what came after that.)

HoTD seems almost as hit-or-miss as The Top to me, even if the hits are better (though I don't like the hornless version of "Close To Me" on it much). Prefer the albums before and after those two as wholes, would have even expected KMKMKM over Head, but then this is a list that declares Achtung Baby the best/most influential album of the last 25 years.

What? No Bandwagonesque at number 1?

you know what's funny, i really like achtung baby! it's definitely my fave u2 album by a long shot. i just sold u2 and cure records to a guy, like, five seconds ago. he seemed happy.

yeah, it's good, but no. 1 of the past 25 years?!?

this is a stupid list.

xpost Bandwagonesque: It's defiantly there, which it wasn't always in their lists...

Achtung Baby sucks and it's a great list.

u2 albums sell so good. i always try and have some on hand. u2, smiths, cure, rem. i can sell them forever. if i get 4 or 5 smiths records in they are gone in a week or two.

achtung baby doesn't suck. it's got the fly on it! i love the fly!

i hate to hate on this list, though. Aside from some hippie-indie shit and technoid fuckery I'm at least down with the singles on the overwhelming majority of these albums (achtung probably is my fave u2 album!). It'd be a perfectly fine list for canon-hungry kids if not for the plodding format, lazy text and constant threat of a sun chips pop-up if your mouse dare wander.

they also did a great job of ignoring emo!

well, there is that.

emo is horrible.

if my eyes don't deceive me, there's nary a sop to Hot Topic unless you want to count American Idiot. That's more of a line in the sand than leaving out Kid A.

meh. on second viewing, this list is better than i thought. no. 1 is crazy. nos. 2 -- 3 make sense.

pete's right, this is a real 40 year old person's list. it does have good stuff on it. all basically crit faves since day one. kollege klassics!

I laughed out loud when I saw No. 1, and I love that album (but come on). And the mag reads as being written by 40-year-olds who seem perfectly comfortable w/their age, not trying to act younger. (xpost)

"This Is Not a Fugazi Article" reads one of many sub-headlines in what is most definitely a Fugazi article from SPIN in 1991.

I prefer my Cure writing three-minute pop songs instead of nine-minute dirges about crocodiles that rhyme "pain' with "rain."

I am so with you on this...plus "The Blood" is top 10 Cure song for me.

And the mag reads as being written by 40-year-olds who seem perfectly comfortable w/their age, not trying to act younger.

no problem with that. forty-year olds should write like forty-year olds.

word up.

i'm 41 and i write like i'm 17. but i was writing like i was 10 when i was in my 30s, so i'm making some progress.

That was too much math for me.

i'm 42 and i write like i'm 62, but i'm gonna regress over the next 20 years.

of all the bjork albums, they go for Debut?

that's right spin, The Battles Of Los Angeles IS better than the soft bulletin, fables of the reconstruction, endtroducing, rain dogs, american recordings...*gives up*

lol. just give in. THE BATTLES OF LOS ANGELES IS BETTER THAN THE SOFT BULLETIN, FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION, ENDTRODUCING, RAIN DOGS, AMERICAN RECORDINGS.