“What really matters is what you like, not what you are like.”
– Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (1995)
Readers who have enjoyed our interviews from time to time know that we typically ask artists to share their five favorite albums of all time at the end of our conversations with them. No matter who the artist is, it’s always fascinating to discover which long players have impacted their personal and professional lives. A few of our interview subjects have even scoffed at the standard five-album limit, rattling off upwards of a dozen or so titles and second-guessing if they’ve made the right choices.
And now, we’re excited to reveal our writers’ respective lists of their 25 all-time favorite albums. We all reserve the right to change our minds about these choices in the future, but for now, here are the indispensable albums that we can’t live without and the reasons why.
Explore Jeremy Levine’s 25 favorites below, click the “Next” button to browse the lists or return to the main index.
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The Allman Brothers Band
Eat a Peach
Capricorn (1972)
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The Allman Brothers use every tool in their toolbox—jazz, hard rock, psychedelia, improvisation, the blues—to create something that only they could. The centerpiece, of course, is “Mountain Jam,” a mammoth improvisational odyssey that has outlived the album and taken on a life of its own. Other, shorter masterpieces like “Little Martha,” “Aint’ Wastin’ Time No More,” and “Melissa” let the Allmans match their improvisational virtuosity with unforgettable songwriting.
Julien Baker
Turn Out the Lights
Matador (2017)
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The first time I heard this album, I was listening to it on headphones in my kitchen, the morning it came out. Standing over a potato I was in the middle of chopping, and I started to cry during “Happy To Be Here.” Not many albums can do this the first time you hear them, but Julien Baker’s ability to reduce complex feelings into just a few words, in the context of a perfectly-managed soundscape, makes her songs feel like they’ve been written onto your heart forever.
The Band
The Last Waltz
Warner Bros. (1978)
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Even though The Last Waltz has a troubled place in The Band’s history, it’s a beautiful swan song. Its greatest asset is its maximalism, its demand that you structure your entire day around it, the ritual that unfolds around watching its legion of guest appearances each Thanksgiving.
Then there’s the music: Rick Danko delivers a masterful vocal performance on “It Makes No Difference” and other Band staples like “Up On Cripple Creek,” “Ophelia,” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” are given brilliant readings. The guest appearances are all wonderful, but I’m partial to the joyful groove of “Such A Night,” the tender beauty of “Helpless,” and the affirming full-group treatment of “I Shall Be Released.”
The Beatles
Abbey Road
Apple (1969)
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The Beatles are a goofy band who got too serious for their own good, but Abbey Road is where they lay bare all of their kooky splendor. In addition to some of the spectacularly fun cuts on the first side of the record, the medley is a perfectly constructed patchwork of incomplete tunes that crash into each other with joyful abandon.
The Beatles helped turn Rock & Roll into an Arts Race, and while I love some of that stuff, Abbey Road is a reminder that artistic reaching doesn’t need to happen at the expense of youth, humor and fun. To me, this album is The Beatles telling us that that they know that this is true deep-down, even if they can’t fully reconcile it in time to save their own band.
Bon Iver
22, A Million
Jagjaguwar (2016)
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I couldn’t tell you the first thing about this record. I have no idea what it means in a way that I can express in words—but the many textures and sounds that converge are somehow deeply meaningful in a way that just doesn’t work with text. Maybe that was the point, the reason it sounds the way that it does. Even though it took me a long time to “get” this album, it’s now indispensable.
Phoebe Bridgers
Stranger In The Alps
Dead Oceans (2017)
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Why not: Phoebe Bridgers writes lyrics like Hemingway wrote novels. She cuts her stories down to the smallest details, assuming that the crumbs she’s picked are strong enough to paint a full picture (and she’s right; I know everything I need to know from “Why do you sing in an English accent? / I guess it’s too late to change it now”). Her voice is straight-up dreamy and her song structures are astonishingly diverse, helping keep Stranger In The Alps meaningful after dozens of listens.
Miles Davis
In A Silent Way
Columbia (1969)
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Stravinsky delivers an aphorism in one of his Harvard lectures that defines how In A Silent Way works: changes reward the listener in the short term, but repetition rewards the listener in the long term. I love Tony Williams’ hi-hat on the first side of this record, chugging forward and leaving space for Dave Holland to build minimalist grooves. The solos find a way to both respect empty space and agitate. With the maximalism of Bitches Brew on the horizon, In A Silent Way has the exact number of notes that it needs—and not one more.
Explosions in the Sky
The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place
Temporary Residence/Bella Union (2003)
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A journey through sudden and dramatic dynamic shifts, a nearly-too-long trod through despair and euphoria, and the whole time, you don’t know where it’s going to end up. Then, about two minutes before the end, there’s a five-note guitar lick and, somehow, you know that you’re home. You suddenly know what the title means. I have no idea how they did that, but it feels the same every time.
Father John Misty
Pure Comedy
Bella Union/Sub Pop (2017)
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While a lot of people think of Pure Comedy as indulgent, pretentious, and overly intellectual, I see it as a deeply emotional work. Father John Misty fully believes that restoring personal relationships outside of modern entertainment is the only way to restore the social contract—and to make sure that you believe him, he built a monument to the concept. The centerpiece is “Leaving LA,” a song in my personal favorite ultra-niche genre (the very long song with a bunch of verses and no chorus), which is as melodically beautiful as it is harmonically rich and emotionally wrenching.
Craig Finn
I Need a New War
Partisan (2019)
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How’s this for the least punk sentence ever: I got into The Hold Steady via The Grateful Dead. When I found out that Joe Russo (founder of Dead tribute act Joe Russo’s Almost Dead) played on I Need a New War, I gave it a spin having no idea who Craig Finn was. I fell in love with the storytelling by the time that first harmonica break hit in “Blankets.” I’ve spent the last year turning this record over and over, tracking the stories, relishing how Finn’s voice bounces over the instrumental parts and inhabits the spirits of his characters. Without the manic propulsion of The Hold Steady behind him, Finn relies on subtler versions of musical tension to support his narrative—giving us room to breathe and take it all in.
David Ford
Let the Hard Times Roll
The Magnolia Label (2010)
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Expansive at a mere forty-four minutes, Let the Hard Times Roll is a kitchen sink album with one central message: nobody’s making it out of this life unscathed. With his cutthroat lyrics and spectacular vocals leading the way, David Ford goes straight for the heart. The rest of his catalogue is spectacular, but it all orbits around the multiplicity of Let the Hard Times Roll.
Guster
Ganging Up on the Sun
Reprise (2006)
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Guster’s career has three eras, each of which has a representative work. There’s the Bongo Era (1999’s Lost and Gone Forever) the Synth Era (2019’s Look Alive) and the Indie Rock Era (Ganging Up on the Sun). While the two other eras are a little bit weirder and thereby a little bit more interesting, the Indie Rock era gives us some of Guster’s best songwriting and album sequencing. Ganging Up on the Sun gives us singalong majesty in “Captain,” beautiful lyrics in “Hang On,” and the singular journey of “Ruby Falls.” It has been a constant companion, soundtracking many, many road trips.
The Hold Steady
Separation Sunday
Frenchkiss (2005)
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Not an easy album by any means, Separation Sunday is The Hold Steady’s most vivid story. It focuses on Holly, a kid who was let down by religion and, to fill her spiritual void, turns to drugs and partying. Activating the delicate bridge between desperation, punk, and spirituality, Separation Sunday unflinchingly stares into the heart of the listener, yanking us into Holly’s world.
“Your Little Hoodrat Friend” is the band’s best song, with its electrifying final chorus full-throatedly celebrating the grimy hordes of teenagers. The juxtaposition of chunky riffs and piano balladry on “Stevie Nix” seems impossible but is, in fact, deeply fulfilling. And the finale, “How A Resurrection Really Feels,” gives me goosebumps every time.
Cinematic and desperate, Separation Sunday is endlessly rewarding and reminds me, on every listen, to see the magic in everything.
Pat Metheny and Charlie Hayden
Beyond the Missouri Sky (Short Stories)
Verve (1997)
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Foregoing the out-there improvisations and complex harmonies of most revered jazz records, Beyond the Missouri Sky is my go-to early morning album. While Pat Metheny can blow anyone’s mind with fretboard, harmonic, and technological pyrotechnics (see 80/81 (1980) or The Way Up (2005)), I’m much more drawn to this understated collaboration with bassist Charlie Haden. With minimal instrumental support, the duet gives Metheny occasion to reunite with the guitar’s simplicity. The result is divine, with aching tunes like “He’s Gone Away,” and “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.” But I’m mostly here for “Spiritual,” the patient finale, which finds Metheny and Haden trading rounds on one of Haden’s melodies. Expressive, no-frills playing at its finest.
The National
High Violet
4AD (2010)
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High Violet combines stillness and sadness in ways that are tough to reconcile. Tracks like “Sorrow,” “Runaway,” and “Bloodbuzz Ohio” take their sweet time, resting on single chords for long stretches, that creates a sense of stability. But lyrics like “I still owe money to the money to the money I owe” or “Sorrow found me when I was young/sorrow waited/sorrow won” create this mountainous sense of despair. It’s immobile sadness, created by the band’s patience in songwriting and instrumentation, and album that asks us to simply sit, and wait, and feel it.
The back half of the album is a murderer’s row of undeniable songs. The closing suite of “Conversation 16,” “England,” and “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks” brings the album to a fever pitch of desperation and then makes a hard pivot to a swan song. High Violet is The National at their best, vibrating with anxiety and beauty.
Neutral Milk Hotel
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Merge (1998)
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More than any other album I’ve ever heard, Aeroplane constructs a universe. It’s carved out an aesthetic territory for itself, where two-headed boys float in jars and bridges burn and twist around. The instrumentation is bizarre—acoustic guitar, lo-fi fuzz, singing saws, accordions, two separate horn-driven instrumentals. As if that weren’t enough, it also features the simplest and most heartbreaking final verse I’ve ever heard on an album.
Phish
Live at Madison Square Garden: New Year’s Eve, 1995
Rhino/JEMP (2005)
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Contrary to popular belief, Phish’s shows are not compendia of aimless noodling sessions; what’s really happening is a complex relationship between meticulously composed music and full-band improvisation. Nowhere does this relationship manifest more clearly than on this recording: the fugal complexity of “Reba” is followed by a patient, blissful jam; the darkness of “Mike’s Song” gives way to a dreamscape; the straight-ahead rock and roll of “Runaway Jim” becomes experimental and lurching. The recording also has narrative, a jet-like propulsion toward one destination: “You Enjoy Myself,” the band’s quintessential song, which is given one of its finest recitations at the end of this very long and special night.
Sigur Rós
Ágætis byrjun
Fat Cat / Smekkleysa (1999)
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Ágætis byrjun feels more like a place than a record. It’s a place out of time, where conventional song structures are unnecessary and the sounds emerges from the astral plane. And yet, Ágætis byrjun is delightfully analog; my personal favorite moment is the cymbal on “Ný Batterí,” which rattles so unpredictably and, well, humanely.
While Ágætis byrjun is a divinely crafted and layered story, accompanied by Jónsi’s ethereal falsetto, it is also a deeply human sound. The singable melodies on tunes like “Olsen Olsen” and the title track bring things just a little bit closer to earth. This record then sees artists attempting the impossible: creating something that tells a story about us, with physical instruments, in a way that sounds like nothing of this earth. They got it.
Bruce Springsteen
Live/1975-85
Columbia (1986)
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Near the end of disc one (of five), Springsteen lays out the central argument of his career: that rock & roll can do anything that an author or a lawyer or anyone else can do. He then spends the next four discs relentlessly proving his case, with a tour de force performance of some of his most energized music (“Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” “Born To Run”) and heartbreaking readings of some of his most desperate work (“Racing in the Street,” “The River.”) Like his concerts, this record is really long, but at its end is a spiritual satisfaction that we know we’re going to get from the moment we hear the opening piano on “Thunder Road.”
Bruce Springsteen
The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
Columbia (1973)
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I showed restraint in only putting two Bruce Springsteen albums on this list. While his career is littered with magic, my favorite installment in the studio output is the sophomore record, with its loose sound and overfull tales. “Fourth of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” is essentially perfect on its own, and the entire second side is a masterclass in narrative and song structure. The transition from “Incident on 57th Street” into “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” is the stuff dreams are made of, while all the emotion in the world seems to sit in Springsteen’s delivery of the “He’s Singing” lyric at the end of “New York City Serenade.”
The Derek Trucks Band
Already Free
Legacy/Columbia (2009)
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While Derek Trucks and his thick guitar tone are at the center of this album, virtuosic playing isn’t the point. Already Free is built on good bones: a tight band, good songwriting, and dynamic arrangements. Trucks’ attention is on supporting the songs and emerging with a heroic solo at the exact right moment. Take “Days is Almost Gone,” for example, in which Mike Mattison sings a tormented bridge, and then Trucks follows up with a floating solo, filled with long notes, that erode the sense of panic and guide us to the chorus. None of this would be possible without the power of the backing band, who ebb and flow between serenity and roar on tunes like “Down in the Flood.” Simply a perfect record: band, singer, guitarist, and song working in harmony.
The Vienna Chamber Orchestra
Tchaikovsky/Dvorak: Serenades for Strings
Naxos (1997)
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In college, I played bass in a small orchestra. My very first semester, we played this Tchaikovsky piece and it fascinated me. It’s not only intensely melodic in every part (even the supportive bass parts are a delight), but every gesture is a response to something that’s come before it in a previous part. This works on a macro level, too: the third movement is a brilliant display of Tchaikovsky’s dense imagination, while the transition to the fourth movement is an ingenious bridge between that sound and the frenzied finale. Each of these complex relationships are perfectly captured in this recording, and pairing Tchaikovsky’s work with the soothing pastoral approach of Dvorak’s Serenade in E offers counterpoint to the heavy first half of the album.
Waxahatchee
Saint Cloud
Merge (2020)
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The release of this album in March 2020 was a gift. If you recall, times were not great. Waxahatchee had previously blown my mind with 2017’s tempestuous Out in the Storm, but just as the world was collapsing, she offered this bucolic, wholehearted follow-up. This is an album that simply asks you to love, something that seemed so impossible, but so urgent, at the time of release. As the years have worn on, it reminds me that putting goodness into the world in challenging times is not only good, but a necessary way to heal. The highlights are “Fire,” which features one of Crutchfield’s finest vocals, “Ruby Falls,” the coda to which is tranquility defined, and “St. Cloud,” a patient reminder that our fates are forever intertwined. On the first day of good weather after a long winter, I immediately reach for Saint Cloud.
The Who
Quadrophenia
Track/MCA (1973)
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There are two kinds of albums: albums that are Quadrophenia and albums that are not. The Who use four sides of a record to tell a story about a question that’s essential to the human experience: how do I try to be myself while gaining acceptance from others? Quadrophenia is simultaneously progressive and punk, sensitive and vengeful, rendered complete by the finest instrumental and vocal performances that The Who ever put on record. It’s everything rock music was made to do.
Stevie Wonder
Innervisions
Tamla (1973)
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While it’s hard to pick one Stevie Wonder record, I reach for Innervisions most frequently. The run of “Living For the City,” “Golden Lady” and “Higher Ground” is twenty genius minutes of soul and funk, encapsulating an entire aesthetic philosophy in three songs. Innervisions is singable, danceable, and joyful, but also political and introspective. “Jesus Children of America” is a harsh rebuke of organized religion, while “He’s Misstra Know-It-All” is surely the most melodically rich tune ever written about Richard Nixon. Wonder’s full command of the songwriting, performing, and recording process makes Innervisions, and the rest of his classic period, material I’m always glad to put on.