Might 22, 2024
UPDATE
Apple Music reveals prime 10 albums of all time on 100 Greatest checklist
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill takes No. 1 spot
Particular visitor artists Nile Rodgers and Maggie Rogers sit down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe and Ebro Darden in a particular countdown finale
Apple Music’s 100 Greatest Albums checklist culminates right now with the much-anticipated reveal of the highest 10 albums of all time and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill topped No. 1.
Upon receiving the information, Lauryn Hill instructed Apple Music, “That is my award, but it surely’s a wealthy, deep narrative, and includes so many individuals, and a lot sacrifice, and a lot time, and a lot collective love.”
To have a good time, Apple Music’s Zane Lowe and Ebro Darden sat down with legendary file producer, author, and performer Nile Rodgers and Grammy-nominated artist and producer Maggie Rogers to mirror on the checklist throughout a particular roundtable broadcasting globally right now on Apple Music. Watch the complete roundtable at music.apple.com.
Apple Music’s 100 Greatest Albums is a contemporary Twenty first-century rating of the best information ever made, crafted by Apple Music’s crew of specialists alongside a choose group of artists, songwriters, producers, and business professionals. The checklist is an editorial assertion, totally impartial of any streaming numbers on Apple Music — a love letter to the information which have formed the world music lovers reside and pay attention in.
Discover the highest 10 albums under.
10. Lemonade (2016), Beyoncé
Beyoncé’s genre-obliterating blockbuster sixth album is livid, defiant, anguished, susceptible, experimental, muscular, triumphant, humorous, and courageous — a vivid private assertion, launched with out warning in a time of public scrutiny and personal struggling. Each second of Lemonade deserves to be studied and celebrated.
Nile Rodgers (NR): This album was so monumental. And I say this with an enormous quantity of respect as a result of I do know what it takes to attain what she did right here.
Zane Lowe (ZL): It was large. Groundbreaking. It was the primary time I really feel that an artist of that magnitude, with that a lot consideration on them, determined to take the narrative and actually attempt to management it and share what they wished to share.
Maggie Rogers (MR): I used to be in faculty when this file got here out, and I keep in mind hitting play on my laptop computer in my residence, like my fifth-floor walkup within the East Village, and it was the primary time I skipped class as a result of I used to be midway by way of and I used to be like, I’m not leaving. I’ve to be right here right now… What I hear greater than something is her energy and the best way it’s coupled along with her vulnerability. There may be such an exposition of feminine energy on this file.
9. Nevermind (1991), Nirvana
Nevermind and its opening salvo “Smells Like Teen Spirit” didn’t simply mark an unlikely breakthrough for the Seattle trio, it upended fashionable tradition in methods by no means earlier than and by no means since. Punk turned pop, grunge turned world vernacular, business partitions broke into rubble, and lead vocalist Kurt Cobain was anointed the reluctant voice of a technology in want of catharsis — all seemingly in a single day.
ZL: When this album got here out, it made everybody who heard it and related to it really feel like we lastly had a band, an actual band that was ours. And all of the issues we favored that appeared disconnected and appeared misplaced and weren’t being taken significantly — it was like oh, you’re taking us significantly now.
MR: The vulnerability of this file, coupled with the depth of the best way it sounded and the cultural second that it bled into, touched one thing.
Ebro Darden (ED): They wished to be nice. They wished to jot down nice songs. They wished to present us all the feels, proper? It felt actual.
8. Again to Black (2006), Amy Winehouse
Amy Winehouse’s presentation and otherworldly, timeless vocals make her music really feel totally different — not a lot an try to re-create the previous as to honor the music she beloved whereas nonetheless being true to the trash-talking, self-effacing millennial she was. The sound of Again to Black may enchantment to retro-soul followers and jazz classicists, however the angle is nearer to rap. Sure, she was humorous. However she wasn’t kidding.
ZL: That is simply heartbreak for 35 minutes. Unrequited, painful heartbreak made at occasions for the dance flooring, at occasions to sing alongside to, at occasions to sway to — don’t let the enjoyment of the music get it twisted. The songwriting is coming from a really painful place.
ED: Proper from the start, I felt like her voice was delivered to us from one other time. Like her vocal styling and what she was doing was timeless in a approach.
MR: So many occasions after I hear an artist try to reference one thing previously, I’m at all times like, I’d sort of simply relatively have the unique factor… However Amy Winehouse did it in a approach that truly took all that custom after which added one thing to it and moved it ahead.
7. good child, m.A.A.d metropolis (2012), Kendrick Lamar
Kendrick Lamar’s sophomore album good child, m.A.A.d metropolis is likely one of the defining hip-hop information of the Twenty first century. West Coast hip-hop elders like Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre anointed Lamar to hold on the legacy of gangsta rap, and the legacy of this album is an important instance of American storytelling that established the longer term Pulitzer Prize winner as maybe his technology’s most achieved author.
ZL: This is likely one of the most superbly curated, created, structured, and track-listed albums of the fashionable period.
ED: Compton simply had delivered a lot hip-hop that there was numerous stress on this child. The power to ship tales, bars, power, efficiency on recorded materials… He delivered on a Black consciousness that you simply don’t at all times get in hip-hop. And that’s why I’m actually happy with the truth that it ranks the place it does on this checklist.
6. Songs within the Key of Life (1976), Stevie Marvel
In 1974, Stevie Marvel was essentially the most critically revered pop star on the planet; he was additionally contemplating leaving the music business altogether. So when Songs within the Key of Life was launched two years later, demand was so excessive that it turned, on the time, the fastest-selling album in historical past. The album, which runs almost 90 minutes, is effortlessly melodic, broad in scope, and deeply private. Sonically, culturally, and emotionally, Songs within the Key of Life is far more than a huge assortment of songs — it types a complete worldview.
NR: For me, it doesn’t matter what instrument he’s taking part in, he kind of speaks with the identical voice. It’s an actual distinctive present. His singing, his harmonica taking part in, his keyboard taking part in all feels like Stevie Marvel.
ZL: It’s iconic. He nonetheless continues to have such an infinite presence and affect on artists right now, younger and established.
MR: Songs within the Key of Life simply exists as this unbelievable piece of artwork. I can’t think about a world that doesn’t have this file in it.
5. Blonde (2016), Frank Ocean
Although Blonde packs 17 tracks into one fast hour, it’s a sprawling palette of concepts, a testomony to the intelligence of flying one’s personal creative freak flag and trusting that audiences will meet them the place they’re at. They did. And Ocean established himself as a generational artist uniquely suited to the complexities and convulsive adjustments of the second decade of the Twenty first century.
ZL: It’s music placed on canvas. I have a look at the canvas by way of totally different mild at totally different occasions of the day, relying on how I really feel. And I see strokes of colour I by no means noticed earlier than and even knew existed. There’s so many layers and ideas and feelings and hooks and concepts that each one one way or the other make sense otherwise each single time.
MR: This file appears like smoke rising, it’s so delicate and so unpredictable and so exact.
4. Purple Rain (1984), Prince & The Revolution
With half its monitor checklist comprising prime 10 singles, this soundtrack is what really turned Prince Rogers Nelson into some of the immediately recognizable and distinctive pop artists ever. Prince usually drew comparisons to Jimi Hendrix for the best way he blended music that felt Black and white, sacred and profane. The fact is that he had no precedent then and no comparability now.
ED: Prince is my favourite artist of all time. Unquestionably. You might level to every part that he does. He really performs the devices. He really writes the track. He’s really singing on stage. He’s really doing his personal artwork course. He did his personal style design. That was all him.
NR: When you consider artists who’ve had such a serious affect in your life — my relationship with Prince was a really peculiar one as a result of we had been so common, which is difficult to say as a result of he’s so irregular; he’s so irregular. However the music, the movie, simply every part round this file was simply so superb. And it simply put me in such a spot of respect and happiness. And similar to, man, not solely you’re preserving the custom alive, however you’re taking us to a different stage. I used to be simply so proud to be on the planet the identical time he was on the planet.
3. Abbey Highway (1969), The Beatles
The Beatles’ Abbey Highway is an ageless, unmatched assortment of songs by a world-changing band at their artistic peak. The band’s eleventh and penultimate album feels like nothing kind of than 4 extraordinarily gifted people taking part in one indelible track after one other in the identical room collectively.
MR: There’s something so particular about making music the place you’ve got a track that’s describing a number of the biggest human ache or sorrow subsequent to a track that you’d fortunately play to your 3-year-old, subsequent to one of many biggest love songs… It’s timeless, however not simply in the best way that it’ll final without end, however in the best way that there’s one thing for each second of humanity and each human feeling on this file. It’s for folks of all ages.
NR: There’s one thing in regards to the Beatles that’s at all times actually magical to me. Consider it or not, the primary track I ever really realized to play on guitar was a Beatles track. I knew at that second that I used to be going to be a guitar participant. Previous to that, I performed the clarinet.
ZL: The quantity of songs which have stayed with folks as they’ve lived their lives to some extent… performed at anniversaries, weddings, funerals, fall in like to, damaged as much as. There are many songbooks that talk to many occasions in life. I feel The Beatles have the songbook of life.
2. Thriller (1982), Michael Jackson
There are few pop albums, and even artistic endeavors, that denote a wholesale shift in time and house the best way Michael Jackson’s Thriller did in 1982. It did nothing lower than outline the fashionable pop blockbuster and redefine the scope and attain of music. Seven of its 9 authentic cuts had been prime 10 singles, and it turned one of many bestselling albums ever made.
ZL: Not solely did it outsell every part in its opening 12 months, it outsold every part in its second 12 months. It modified the best way folks approached making music, releasing music, distributing, advertising and marketing music, and nobody ever caught as much as it. It set the bar so excessive.
NR: When Michael dropped this file, to me, the world modified. It was a seismic shift. Having a Black artist do a music video on the extent of “Thriller” simply modified the world.
1. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), Lauryn Hill
Lauryn Hill’s debut — and solely — solo studio album was a seismic occasion in 1998: a stunningly uncooked, profound look into the religious panorama not simply of one of many period’s largest stars, however of the period itself. She was, and stays, a once-in-a-generation expertise whose inspiration and innovation will be heard by way of the a long time. Artists exhaust lengthy discographies hoping for a cohesive piece of labor resonant sufficient to reshape tradition and inscribe its creator into the pantheon; Lauryn Hill did it in a single.
ZL: This album doesn’t simply resonate with the individuals who had been round when it got here out and who maintain it expensive. It has not dated, not even a fraction. In reality, it feels extra recent and extra related the extra you take heed to it… There are numerous younger artists listening to it, and it’s turning into a part of their creative DNA. It’s inspiring and influencing them… It’s timeless.
MR: Lauryn introduced all people along with her on this file. She introduced her neighborhood. She introduced her pals and her household. You’re within the kitchen; you’re in the lounge along with her. You hear folks; you hear the voices speaking… It’s so open and so expansive and so direct… To have an artist like Lauryn Hill be the primary, which means lots.
ED: It’s very private. This album delivers on so many ranges. It exemplifies and captures fashionable music of the final 25 years, holistically. It’s R&B, it’s hip-hop, it’s impartial ladies, robust ladies, it’s topical, it’s sampling… I feel that’s why it bought voted primary.
NR: She’s superb. This file is superb.
Watch the complete roundtable dialog with Nile Rodgers, Maggie Rogers, Zane Lowe, and Ebro Darden at music.apple.com.
As a further present to music followers, Apple Music created 100 audio vignettes telling the story of every album and contextualizing its significance and place on the checklist. Written by a crew of music specialists and edited by award-winning audio editors, these vignettes are sonic companions to Apple Music’s 100 Greatest Albums. Hearken to the tales behind every of the albums and extra on Apple Podcasts at apple.co/100BestRadio.
Music lovers can even entry 100 Greatest Albums particular content material throughout the Apple ecosystem on the App Retailer, Apple Information, Apple Retail, apple.com, and extra. Moreover, they’ll discover a 100 Greatest Albums devoted house on Apple Books, which celebrates titles by and about artists from the checklist.
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