Are these the best albums ever?
Was music better back in the day, or are we just biased towards the songs we grew up with?
Top of the bots
We asked Microsoft’s Copilot AI for a “consensus” top 10 best albums, and here was the response:
The Beatles – Abbey Road (1969)
The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds (1966)
Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited (1965)
Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On (1971)
Michael Jackson – Thriller (1982)
Miles Davis – Kind of Blue (1959)
Nirvana – Nevermind (1991)
Prince & The Revolution – Purple Rain (1984)
Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life (1976)
Do you agree or disagree? Do you think any genre or era has been unfairly underrepresented? Bear in mind that LPs were not invented until 1948 and albums as we know them did not really become common until the late 1950s.
If you're looking for a vigorous intergenerational discussion, here's a topic that's sure to kick it off: What are the best music albums of all time?
It's a stock subject for newspapers and magazine articles as well as debates in pubs and around the dining table.
Of course, there is no definitive answer. It comes down to personal preference, which is influenced not just by musical taste, but by generation and cultural background.
In any list of this type, a lot of musical styles are ignored and there is usually a heavy bias towards music from the United States and Britain.
And if the list was compiled by somebody in their teens or early twenties, it’s highly likely to be dominated by music many seniors have never heard performed by artists we know nothing about.
Older songs, however, take us back to memorable times in our lives, and are linked to people we know and places that meant something to us.
The latest “greatest” list to attract my attention – from an online magazine, The Shot – includes a good number of albums that will be familiar to older Australians (even though, disappointingly, there’s no music from Australian artists).
That sense of familiarity is one of the key reasons its list of the “50 greatest albums of all time” has struck a chord.
Unlike many critics’ canons that lean heavily on the same “sacred texts”, The Shot’s approach is deliberately broad, conversational, and unapologetically subjective, encouraging readers to “agree or disagree loudly”.
Albums such as Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Billy Joel’s The Stranger, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, AC/DC’s Back in Black, and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA recur not just on The Shot’s list, but across countless polls and rankings.
Of course, there are a couple of Beatles albums (but perhaps not the ones you might think), along with Carole King’s Tapestry, and entries from The Eagles, Queen, and Elton John.
More than half of the entries are pre-1990, with four from the 1960s, including the earliest entry, The Beatles’ Rubber Soul (1965); 13 from the 1970s; and 12 from the 1980s. Only one was released in the current decade, with another album representing the entire 2010s.
By comparison, other lists, including Rolling Stone magazine’s regularly reissued “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, have drawn both praise and controversy for their attempts to “update the canon”.
The 2020 revision famously placed Marvin Gaye’s 1971 LP, What’s Going On, at number one, replacing The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).
This signalled a shift toward greater recognition of soul and hip‑hop, but critics still perceived an American and Anglophone bias.
But the revision did highlight how ideas of “greatness” evolve as cultural priorities change.
Streaming-era lists add another complication. Apple Music’s widely debated “100 Best Albums” list, released in 2024, mixed the likes of The Beatles’ Abbey Road and Michael Jackson’s Thriller with much more recent releases, provoking accusations of “recency bias” and deliberately creating controversy.
Of course, these lists often say as much about the people or platforms producing them as the music itself.
What The Shot’s list does well is acknowledge this subjectivity rather than pretend to be above it. It acknowledes the fact that there is no definitive list.
Of course, any “greatest” list will ignite conversations shaped by memory, identity, and experience.
The real value of these rankings is not who comes out on top, but the rediscoveries and vigorous discussions they spark.
Related reading: The Shot, Wikipedia, Consequence, ABC
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