1970s
34 albums
Bitches Brew
Miles plugged in and opened jazz to rock rhythms, editing long group improvisations into a dense double album with tape ...
Head Hunters
The album that fused electric jazz with funk grooves, opening with the synth bass line of Chameleon, one of the most sam...
Blue
Recorded after a period of travel and heartbreak, Blue stripped confession to piano, guitar and dulcimer with almost no ...
Tapestry
King stepped from the Brill Building writer rooms to her own microphone and made one of the best selling albums ever, wi...
Led Zeppelin IV
Released without a title or band name, the fourth Zeppelin album sold over 37 million copies and contains Stairway to He...
The Dark Side of the Moon
A continuous suite about madness, money and time, built at Abbey Road with tape loops, analog synths and Alan Parsons en...
Rumours
Written while two couples inside the band were breaking apart, it turned private dysfunction into gleaming California po...
Born to Run
Springsteen third album threw everything into wall of sound street opera: Thunder Road, the title track and Jungleland. ...
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Bowie invented a doomed alien rock star and told his story across twelve songs, making the concept album permanent in ro...
Low
The first Berlin album, made with Brian Eno, split robotic pop songs on side one from haunted instrumentals on side two....
Paranoid
The album that codified heavy metal: doom tempos, tritone riffs, Ozzy Osbourne wail and Tony Iommi shortened fingers gui...
Never Mind the Bollocks Heres the Sex Pistols
One album, one chaotic year, and punk detonated in Britain. God Save the Queen was banned by the BBC and the record stil...
Ramones
Four guys from Queens in leather jackets recorded the founding document of American punk with one minute songs and count...
Horses
Smith fused poetry and garage rock at CBGB, opening with a Gloria rewrite that declared Jesus died for somebody sins. Ho...
London Calling
A double album that smashed punk open into reggae, rockabilly, jazz and radio pop. Rolling Stone named it the best album...
Unknown Pleasures
Ian Curtis shadow baritone, Peter Hook high bass and Martin Hannett frozen production created a new interior landscape f...
Parallel Lines
The album where punk attitude met disco production on Heart of Glass and perfect pop on One Way or Another. Mike Chapman...
Whats Going On
A song cycle about Vietnam veterans, ecology, poverty and faith, initially rejected by executives who thought it too pol...
Songs in the Key of Life
A double album of overflowing invention: Sir Duke, I Wish, Pastime Paradise and Isnt She Lovely. It closed the classic r...
Superfly
The soundtrack outclassed its blaxploitation film, with Freddie Dead and Pusherman documenting drug trade damage instead...
Maggot Brain
The ten minute title track is a single fuzz guitar soliloquy by Eddie Hazel, reportedly directed by George Clinton to pl...
Theres a Riot Goin On
Recorded in slow paranoia with early drum machines and overlapping vocals, the drifting groove of Family Affair answered...
Autobahn
A 22 minute drive on the motorway reduced to melodic electronics and processed vocals, edited down to three minutes for ...
Trans-Europe Express
Sequencer discipline and European cool: the title suite and Numbers fed directly into Afrika Bambaataa Planet Rock and D...
Catch a Fire
The Wailers Island debut added rock guitar overdubs for the world market and put reggae on the international map. Stir I...
Exodus
Recorded in London exile after an assassination attempt, it stacked Three Little Birds, Jamming and One Love into a sing...
Zombie
The title track mocks soldiers told to fall in and attack without minds of their own, a direct taunt to the Nigerian mil...
Red Headed Stranger
Nelson traded lush Nashville strings for sparse, almost demo like arrangements of a western killing concept story. Label...
Exile on Main St
A sprawling double album recorded partly in the basement of Nellcote, the villa Keith Richards rented in the south of Fr...
Hotel California
The fifth Eagles album turned the California dream into a story of excess and disillusion. The title track, with its int...
The Wall
A double rock opera conceived by Roger Waters after he spat at a fan during a 1977 concert, it follows a rock star named...
Innervisions
Wonder played most of the instruments himself, building layered synthesizer textures with Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margo...
Off the Wall
His first adult solo album and first with producer Quincy Jones blended disco, funk and soft rock into a polished dance ...
Coat of Many Colors
The title song recalls a patchwork coat her mother sewed from rags during her childhood in the Smoky Mountains of Tennes...