Objectively, what do you think is the best album of all time?

In terms of sheer playability and listenability, nothing for me tops Kind of Blue or Endtroducing.

 

New Adventures in Hi-Fi is my overall best album ever made choice but it’s usually a toss up between that and Quadrophenia.

 

Dark Side Of The Moon
Thriller
Exile On Main St.
Nevermind
Kind Of Blue, Ballads
Azymuth: Telecommunication, Light as a Feather, Outubro, Cascades. (Just for something - if you like Brazilian.)

 

Using album sales is about as objective as you can get. The best-selling album of all time is Thriller.
Best-selling album

Another potential objective measure is the length of weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200. According to Wiki, that’s the West Side Story soundtrack which was #1 for 54 weeks.

 

IMHO.. Exile on Main Street is the best album .....but there a few dozen albums right there with it

 

For its cultural and musical influence ..pepper

 

Dylan: Blood on the Tracks

theres a lot of perfect or close to perfect albums out there, off the top of my head: Pretenders S/T; Clash London Calling; Miles: Kind of Blue; ACDC: Back in Black; Doors: LA Woman; definitely a couple of Led Zep albums... so many to choose from.

 

Great stuff on your list for sure.

 

1965 - Highway 61 Revisited. There are a number from which to choose.

 

also one of the best movies of all time

 

The Cure - Disintegration.

 

I'm clicking Like on this again!

 

I'm not sure what Pepper's cultural significance is. It's not autentic psychedelia, it's not saying anything, doesn't have a message.

Musically it's much easier to see its relevance - other artists started making thematic albums with lots of overdubs.

 

Best LP of the last 20 years, from the tape to the lathe:

 

The thing with Kind of Blue is that while it might have been recorded in two days, it took far longer to be able to create music like that--many years of practicing an instrument, learning theory (whether in a traditional manner or not--you don't play like that if you don't understand a lot about theory), listening to others, playing with others, etc. All of that sort of work, where it's building on a tradition that was many decades in the making, is preparation for recording an album like Kind of Blue, and if you don't do that preparation, you can't successfully play that sort of music.

 

I use one of those mircowave "air poppers"--basically it's just a rubber bowl with a lid where you can throw the kernals in plain/dry, and it pops that way. It's a healthy snack when you eat it that way. I just add a small amount of olive oil-based "butter" when it's done so it's not quite so dry/rice cake-like to eat (and sometimes some raw crushed garlic--I put raw, crushed garlic on all sorts of things).

 

But really, maybe at least as long as the creator says so, couldn't every single thing be completely/perfectly successful on its own terms? No matter what something is like, someone could say, "That's exactly what I intended it to be like."

 

The cultural significance can just be the reactions to it, the importance of it to a particular population, etc.

 

Dark side of the moon

 

Although I think as a film I liked Powaqqatsi even more--it was especially powerful on a big screen in the theater, which I was lucky enough to see when it was released. I also like the Powaqqatsi soundtrack as much as Koyaanisqatsi.

The third part of the trilogy, Naqoyqatsi, didn't click with me as much on either end, though I did still like it.

 

All opinions are subjective, and most of the answers so far are predictable for this forum.
I may not like the answer, but the only objective measure is the album that sold the most units.

 

My (totally intuitive) guess is that if you were to do a Rotten Tomatoes type survey (limited to voters who generally enjoy the type of music on the album)*, the winner would be Kind of Blue.

*In other words, a person who had no interest in jazz would not be counted for jazz albums. And before someone tells me that such a poll would be impossible - well, yeah.

 

No argument whatsoever. Start to finish. But I simply could not pick just one album. Sometimes, I'm in the mood for Floyd. Then it's got to be DSOM or WYWH. Or The Beatles. In that case, Abbey Road. Or The Stones. Sticky Fingers or Let It Bleed. But if I was stranded on a desert island with just ONE album, Zeppelin IV is a solid pick. It would beat "The Best of Terry Jacks".

 

True, though that would also apply to albums like Rumours, Dark Side of The Moon, Hotel California etc...very popular and apparently important to a lot of people, but a bit unclear why.

 

No such thing.