Spin Magazine's Top 125 Albums of the Last 25 Years

I purchased #125 - Moby's Play (very good), #123 - The Hives' Veni Vidi Vicious (thought it was complete garbage), #119 - Green Day's American Idiot (one of my all-time favorites), #108 - The Fugees' The Score (Don't remember liking much outside of the two big hits), #70 - Pearl Jam's Ten (Evenflow is one of my all time favorites, very good album, but I don't particularly enjoy listening to the album anymore), #52 - Kaney Wests' The College Dropout (On one hand, a handful of great songs, on the other, this album is WAY, WAY, WAY overrated)

I've streamed #65 - Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP (Don't remember much about it other than very tight beats), #57 - The White Stripes' Elephant (None of these songs are my favorite, but I love the album as a whole), #7 Guns N Roses' Appetite For Destruction (I'll be honest, I've had this sitting on my hard drive for a year, but I've yet to listen to anything outside of the big three hits)

I've listened to #1 all the way through, and while the outstanding tracks are amazing, I don't see the consistency throughout the album that it should take to be #1.

Can't really argue with this list. I might even dare to say this is the "top list of top stuff all time." They seem to have found the right balance of critical acclaim and popular appeal.

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And one more thing, as great as "Hey Ya!" and "The Way She Moves" were, can we name Speakerboxx/The Love Below as the most overrated of all time? And, for that matter, I'd argue that OutKast is the most overrated group on this list.

 

That's a pretty good list.

I own 58 total (really) and seven of the top 10. Don't agree with No. 1 at all ... to be honest, I don't care for much of U2's post-Joshua Tree stuff.

 

Overall, it's a good list and a good read. Yes, they pretty much stuck with the "alternative" rock genre, but that's SPIN's wheelhouse, so no complaints about that.

I own 16 of those albums, and married a huge Prince fan, so am quite familiar with their No. 2 pick. It's his last good album, IMHO, but to this day he's still a great live act.

Two other interesting points: Unlike many SJ REM fans, SPIN didn't love "Life's Rich Pageant" as much as "Fables" or "Automatic for the People." I'd rate LRP above the two they picked.

And it was great to see "Last Splash" by the Breeders on there (No. 79). I wore that cassette out back in the early 1990s. Long live Kim Deal!

Always wondered why critics fell all over themselves to praise Liz Phair's debut, which came out about the same time as "Last Splash." Now, I have both albums and like them both, but musically, there's no comparison. And if you listen carefully to the lyrics on the Breeders' album, the message is similar to "Exile in Guyville."

 

Looks like I own or have owned 10 of the top 15 and 52 overall. Pretty solid list.

More than anything, I loved seeing some of the CDs that made me fall in love with rap -- "Paul's Boutique" by the Beastie Boys, "Low End Theory" by ATCQ, anything by Public Enemy, etc. -- represented. Most of the alternative music I listened to college in the '90s made the cut, too.

 

I own maybe 10 percent of the album's listed here. Never heard of many of them. Good to see the love for Sign O' The Times, probably my fave Prince album. I would have thought The Joshua Tree would have been higher, and I'd put it ahead of Achtung, Baby.

Biggest bonus for me out of this? The links to the Spin archive. Man, did I love that mag in it's early days. Great reading.

 

I'm a little surprised Achtung Baby is No. 1. It's a great album, but best of the last 25 years? I don't know about that.

I'd have put Appetite No. 1

Good list though.

 

I own 58 of them.

 

Very good list: I own about 25 of them.

(I would guess in the comparable 1960-1985 list, I probably own 100. But that's OK; I got older.)

And I completely concur with No. 1: "Achtung Baby" is directly analogous to "Sgt. Pepper" -- a complete sonic, technological and instrumental reinvention of the band along with an adoption of a contrived artificial persona to symbolize the new incarnation of the band.

U2 could very easily put out "Joshua Tree v. 2" (and in fact, many fans wanted them to) just as the Beatles could have re-done "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver" for 20 more years had they chosen to.

Like "Pepper," "Achtung" led to a brief stylistic digression in the band's musical direction -- U2 put out "Zooropa" and "Pop" as the Beatles had put out "Magical Mystery Tour" -- before a return to more fundamental styles later in their careers.

 

I have no problem with "Achtung Baby" at the top of the list, but when I looked through the top 65 and didn't find a Madonna album or Springsteen but artists like Aphex Twin and DJ Shadow, then there was really no need to give the list any more of my time.

 

"The Rising" was certainly one of the top 125 albums of the last 25 years.

 

I have 34 of them, but I just got destroyed on the rap, R&B, and techno stuff. Just not in my wheelhouse. Apparently "Spin" is not big on alt-country. They threw a token Steve Earle album on there and a latter-era Wilco record that is about as country as Jay-Z, and that's about it other than maybe "Little Ghost" off "White Blood Cells."

 

Green Day's American Idiot at 119? I always thought that was one of the better rock opera albums of all time. It certainly has aged poorly and the sequel sucks to high heaven, but 119? C'mon.