A list that claims to be universal, but overlooks almost everything

As I, perhaps looking to control obsessions that have dominated my thoughts and prevented me doing any real work on this blog or elsewhere over recent months, browsed YouTube looking for greatest albums articles of the type I lavished up a decade or so ago, I found one from 2013 that I had failed entirely to discover when it was originally written.

The list is, interestingly from my perspective and history as a music listener, written by Australians, namely Toby Creswell, Craig Mathieson, and John O‘Donnell. The critics claim that they are dealing with what they perceive to be a kind of “nationalist” bias in rock criticism, claiming in their YouTube interview that:

“A US list will contain 99 US artists and the Beatles; a British list will contain 99 British artists and one US artist” 

I do have my doubts that “nationalist” bias of this type is so extreme as Cresswell and Mathieson claimed in their interview; nonetheless I do not doubt that the nation one is from can greatly influence which albums are considered important.

Creswell and Mathieson claim to have compiled their list from as many authoritative sources as possible rather than their own listening; however from my knowledge garnered during the 2000s of the most serious kind of rock criticism it is not possible for me to believe honestly that they have simply failed to see that a large number of  “best albums” lists are totally ephemeral and simply reflect the public popularity of records rather than enduring influence or being even remotely groundbreaking or even distinctive. To take at least some care, even if not the most extreme sort, to ensure that such lists are avoided is essential.

Joe S. Harrington’s decision in his Top 100 Albums to not allow anything released after 1992 to be included was a sign of wisdom since it is exceedingly clear he was listening to very little groundbreaking during the decade between 1993 and 2003, whilst David Keenan, who did include a couple of albums released after 1993 in his The Best Albums Ever...Honest, nonetheless came out utterly free from trendiness and attention to the present. Piero Scaruffi’s list of the 25 best albums is even more than Harrington’s or Keenan’s, the product of extremely intensive study of music and sound (not I would say by any means perfect), and focuses on music whose influence over the long term can be clearly demonstrated. I will say that I think Scaruffi can be a little over-the-top in praising avant-garde music that is not as good as he thinks, but his ability to find music of considerable value but which I would never learn about from other more mainstream critics is most definitely sufficient for me to recommend him.

I have tabulated Creswell, Mathieson and O‘Donnell’s top 100 albums, published in their book 100 Best Albums Of All Time, along with whether the album is included in the three lists by Harrington, Keenan and Scaruffi noted in the preceding paragraph and which I also note in my critique of NME’s Top 500 Albums from around the same time. Symbols:

1. a blank indicates that the artist has no albums on the relevant list
2. one asterisk is added for each album other than the one listed here the artist has on the relevant list
3. in Harrington’s and Scaruffi’s lists, each album included is given its number on that list
4. for Keenan’s list, which was not strictly ordered, each album from here included therein is simply labelled with a “Y”
5. albums released after the lists were published, or after 1992 with Harrington, are labelled with an “ineligible”
6. albums I own are shaded in pink

	Artist	Title	Year	Harrington	Keenan	Scaruffi
1	Bob Dylan	Highway 61 Revisited	1966		**
2	The Beatles	Revolver	1966		*
3	The Clash	London Calling	1979	*
4	Nirvana	Nevermind	1991	*
5	Van Morrison	Astral Weeks	1968		Y	#21
6	Joni Mitchell	Blue	1971
7	The Rolling Stones	Sticky Fingers	1971	*	*
8	Fleetwood Mac	Rumours	1977
9	The Velvet Underground and Nico	The Velvet Underground and Nico	1967	#25	Y	#4
10	Public Enemy	It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back	1988	#27	*
11	The Beach Boys	Pet Sounds	1966	#84	*
12	Bruce Springsteen	Darkness on the Edge of Town	1978		*	*
13	Television	Marquee Moon	1977	#83	*
14	Little Richard	Here’s Little Richard	1954
15	Led Zeppelin	Untitled (Led Zeppelin IV)	1971		Y
16	Radiohead	OK Computer	1997
17	The Band	The Band	1969		*
18	The Beatles	The Beatles (The White Album)	1969		Y
19	Pixies	Doolittle	1989
20	John Lennon	John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band	1970
21	U2	Achtung Baby	1991
22	Simon and Garfunkel	Bridge over Troubled Water	1970
23	Bob Dylan	Blonde on Blonde	1966		**	#17
24	Sex Pistols	Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols	1977	#2
25	Prince	Sign of the Times	1987
26	Arcade Fire	Funeral	2004	ineligible	ineligible
27	Michael Jackson	Thriller	1982
28	Neil Young	On the Beach	1973	*	*
29	Jay-Z	The Blueprint	2001	ineligible	ineligible
30	Massive Attack	Blue Lines	1991
31	The Smiths	The Queen Is Dead	1986		Y
32	Carole King	Tapestry	1971
33	David Bowie	Hunky Dory	1971	*
34	Ray Charles	Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music	1962
35	Paul Simon	Graceland	1986
36	Iggy and the Stooges	Raw Power	1973	*	*
37	The Jimi Hendrix Experience	Are You Experienced?	1967	#20	*
38	Aretha Franklin	Lady Soul	1968
39	Ramones	Ramones	1976	#63	*
40	The Rolling Stones	Exile on Main Street	1972	*	*
41	Patti Smith	Horses	1975	#17	*
42	Miles Davis	Kind of Blue	1958	**	Y	*
43	Sonic Youth	Daydream Nation	1988	#94	*
44	Bruce Springsteen	Born to Run	1975		*	*
45	The Beatles	Abbey Road	1970		*
46	Guns’n’Roses	Appetite for Destruction	1987
47	Black Sabbath	Paranoid	1971	*	*
48	George Harrison	All Things Must Pass	1971
49	Green Day	American Idiot	2004
50	The Doors	The Doors	1967			#5
51	Pink Floyd	Dark Side of the Moon	1973
52	James Brown	Live at the Apollo	1963		Y
53	Creedence Clearwater Revival	Cosmo’s Factory	1970
54	Pearl Jam	Vs	1993	ineligible
55	The Wailers	Burning	1976
56	The Monkees	Headquarters	1967
57	Talking Heads	Remain in Light	1980
58	Rod Stewart	Every Picture Tells a Story	1971
59	Devo	Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!	1978
60	Chuck Berry	After School Session	1957
61	Eminem	The Marshall Mathers LP	2001	ineligible	ineligible
62	Blondie	Parallel Lines	1978
63	Dusty Springfield	Dusty in Memphis	1968		Y
64	R.E.M.	Automatic for the People	1992		*
65	The Supremes	Where Did Our Love Go?	1964
66	Oasis	(What’s the Story) Morning Glory	1995	ineligible
67	Kanye West	My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy	2004	ineligible	ineligible
68	Jeff Buckley	Grace	1994	ineligible
69	The White Stripes	Elephant	2003	ineligible	ineligible
70	Eagles	Hotel California	1976
71	Wilco	Yankee Hotel Foxtrot	1994	ineligible
72	Beastie Boys	Paul’s Botique	1989
73	Tom Waits	Rain Dogs	1985
74	Kate Bush	Hounds of Love	1985		Y
75	The Who	Live at Leeds	1971	*	*
76	Joy Division	Closer	1980	#47
77	Kraftwerk	Trans-Europe Express	1977
78	Randy Newman	Sail Away	1972
79	Pavement	Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain	1994	ineligible
80	Curtis Mayfield	Curtis	1970
81	Roxy Music	For Your Pleasure	1973	*
82	The Strokes	Is This It?	2001	ineligible	ineligible
83	Midnight Oil	Diesel and Dust	1987
84	Coldplay	Viva la Vida, or Death and All His Friends	2008	ineligible	ineligible
85	The Kinks	The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society	1968		Y
86	Pretenders	Pretenders	1980
87	The Modern Lovers	The Modern Lovers	1975	#70
88	Primal Scream	Screamadelica	1991
89	Fairport Convention	Unhalfbricking	1968		*
90	Elvis Costello and the Attractions	This Year’s Model	1978	#72
91	Portishead	Dummy	1994	ineligible
92	AC/DC	Back in Black	1980	*	Y
93	Beck	Odelay	1998	ineligible
94	Gang of Four	Entertainment	1979
95	Marvin Gaye	What’s Going On?	1971
96	Arctic Monkeys	Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not	2006	ineligible	ineligible
97	Queen	A Night at the Opera	1975
98	Derek and the Dominos	Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs	1970
99	P.J. Harvey	Let England Shake	2011	ineligible	ineligible
100	The Byrds	Sweetheart of the Rodeo	1968	*	*

As one can see at the merest glance, most recordings on Harrington’s Keenan’s and especially Scaruffi’s lists are completely absent:

• only eleven of Harrington’s Top 100 albums are present
• only ten of Keenan’s best 103 are present
• only four of Scaruffi’s top 25 are present
• ten artists on the list have a different album in Harrington’s Top 100
• eighteen artists on the list have a different album in Keenan’s list
• only Springsteen has a different album in Scaruffi’s top 25

What one can say about the general composition of Creswell, Mathieson and O‘Donnell’s list is that it has many major omissions by genre. Heavy metal is utterly absent apart from Black Sabbath and AC/DC, but hardcore punk and progressive rock are also unrepresented, and experimental rock also absent except for Sonic Youth, whose pop hooks allowed them to reach the Billboard Top 40 in 1994 with Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star. Folk and folk rock are also weakly represented apart from Dylan and Joni Mitchell, for whom I will say the magnificent and utterly unique Hejira may be the finest recording I have ever heard and stands much superior to the more famous Blue. The absence of metal and progressive rock is of course almost certainly due to well-documented biases in Creswell, Mathieson and O‘Donnell’s sources, and how with progressive rock the key albums were never remotely popular commercially in the English-speaking world. These biases are however no excuse for not even trying to correct them.

Another severe fault is how the most recent albums on the list are all popular and what one must call “fashionable”. There is not even something by Joanna Newsom, arguably the most brilliant musical artist of modern times, yet alone by more obscure underground acts since the 1990s, such as the post-rock scene.

For all its grandiose claims, Creswell, Mathieson and O‘Donnell’s list is a very bad one. It simply reproduces badly flawed lists of music that tends towards the ephemeral, and ignores important parts of rock history.