Is your favourite album set in stone, or is it flexible?

Yep, my favorite constantly changes, and may change back to former faves.

It's music, not a legally binding agreement.

 

Hell no, could it it ever be set in stone!

I listen to several different subgenres of: prog (avant-prog, Zeuhl, symph, technical-metal, prog-metal), Canterbury), jazz (fusion, post-bop, chamber-jazz, avant-garde), classical (avant-garde, spectralisim, serialism, atonal).

Each on of all the above have multiple pieces and compositions which I consider masterpieces.

There is no way I can pick one favorite among each of the above, let alone one above all the rest.

 

How 'bout next week, next month, next year...?

 

Agreed. To many genres to pick a definitive single album, because the albums I consider masterpieces are individual gems that have their own specific superlative nature. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos are great, but he couldn't play the blues like Muddy Waters at Newport. Likewise, the only comparative basis for Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison and B.B. King at Cook County Jail is that they both were held at detention facilities. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath has literally nothing to do with Five Leaves Left, nor does Physical Graffiti have anything to compare with Days of Future Past or A Love Supreme. Wish You Were Here, The White Album, Sketches of Spain, The Four Seasons, Liege & Lief: they are what they are, and I love them -- and a hundred or so more I'd consider "great".

 

My top 10 has typically always had the same core group of albums, but I sense it being completely different in a year, or so. But this is basically the end of my first decade of being seriously into music, so it's probably a natural evolution point.

 

Yes. My favourite album is Exile but for deeply personal reasons. In 1971 to 1972. my family spent half a year in England and half a year in Switzerland. We were in Geneva starting in February 1972 so we were just down the road from where Keith was living and where the rehearsal footage for the 1972 tour was shot. That summer we drove to the French Riviera and went through Villefranche-Sur-Mer. My brother's friend had been down there earlier and said there were reports that you could hear what was going on at the house - parties and recording - from some distance away. I was eleven. When we returned, my older brother and sister regularly played the Stones albums that are now acclaimed as the Big Four including, of course, Exile On Main St.. I loved the cover and the handwritten lyrics included in the design. I loved the notes for each song though I had no idea what amyl nitrate was. The music took time to seep in. I didn't really get into the Stones until 1974 when I read the Anthony Scaduto Jagger biography and then played the albums for myself and got to know them. I love Exile as a construct. I don't do vinyl now but picking up the record and playing a side and flipping it over made you more aware of how the four sides are put together. The true test is whether you listen to it and I have, without a doubt, played Exile more than any other album and I still play it (I don't know, at least two times a year but I sometimes sample individual songs randomly). So yeah my number one record is set in Stones.

 

Nothing's going to change my world... er, my fave:

 

Other than three or four Fabs albums, nothing's going to push this out as my fave non-Fabs album:

 

Don't have a set in stone favourite; but whatever it happens to be, it's usually by the Beatles.

 

I appreciate the Beatles were good but I think there are a lot of better albums made. Please don’t get defensive I am not trying to start a fight. I love their albums but I love others more.

 

Set in stone, and I'm fairly confident it'll remain there for the rest of my life.

 

There will never be a replacement favourite for you.
I am in the same boat. ' Bridge Over Troubled Water' has been my favourite album for over 50 years.
How many times have I played it? Who knows? Thousands? Probably. It's part of my musical DNA.
What could possibly come along to replace it?

 

<======= Set in stone for 30+ years.

Top 2 to 10 shows signs of flexibility including a katydid, a toilet seat surrounded by graffiti, radio waves from a pulsar, a boy posing for the second time on a 3rd album etc....

 

I'm not sure that I've ever really had a "favorite" album. I have lots of favorites. I'm this way with movies, tv shows, songs, books, etc.

 

I could give you my favorite folk album. Or my favorite industrial album. Or my favorite prog metal album. Or my favorite death metal album. Or my favorite pop latino album. Etc, etc. I like too many things that fit in different holes to have a definite list

 

My choice of favorite album depends on my mood.

 

My favorite album has been The Who's Quadrophenia since 1993. Seems highly unlikely anything will unseat it.

 

The Wedding Present's Seamonsters has been my favorite album since the very first time I heard it in 1991. Nothing's knocked it off its perch since then, but I suppose it's possible that something will at some point. But I doubt it. A few have come close, though- Rocket from the Crypt's Circa: Now!, GbV's Bee Thousand, and Pearl Jam's No Code.

 

My top#3 has remained the same for the last 20 years:

3- Blonde on blonde, Bob - 1966
2- King Creole, Elvis - 1958
1- The wild, the innocent & the e-street shuffle, Bruce - 1974

 

I've always been list-oriented, so every couple of years I'll have a look at my Top X Albums Of All-Time (maybe 50, usually 100) and see if I've changed my mind about anything.

There's usually plenty of movement and switching beneath the Top 10, but the Top 10 rarely change (Achtung Baby slips in and out, depending on how successfully I can block out Bono from my thoughts). In fact, the identity of my Top 5 albums hasn't changed for about 15 years now, but the order occasionally does.

Blue Nile's Hats is my #1 99% of the time. PG's So briefly took over (it would have been #1 until Hats' release, probably), and one time I played Songs From The Big Chair when it was last reissued, I felt like it was the best album ever. Those, plus two other 80s albums, are my set-in-stone top 5.

EG.

 

It has changed over the years and it can also change back.
My first favourite album was Dark Side Of The Moon, then Lovesexy (Prince) in the 80s and Check Your Head (Beastie Boys) in the 90s. Of course with other temporary highlights inbetween. Today I guess it's Songs In The Key Of Life because it's the album I listened to the most in the past two years.
So yeah, totally flexible.
I guess there are about 30 albums that I love and could hit the top spot.

 

Beatles White LP. I even have the t-shirt…..

 

I bought the UK version of Duane Eddy's $1,000,000 Worth of Twang - Vol II in April 1964. It was the fourth album I bought - there have been hundreds since. But nothing will knock that one off my No. 1 slot.

 

I don't have an absolute favorite album. I have some favorites, but not one that I consider an absolute favorite.

 

A few albums come close but my favourite is set in stone - Revolver