Best Albums
The 50 Best Albums of 1982
Looking back at 1982 in music, the headline is obvious: Thriller Sells A Bajillion Copies, Becomes World’s Biggest Album. But is it the year’s best album? Funny enough, Michael Jackson‘s sixth LP hardly even affected the charts that year — it snuck out in late November, just as Men at Work’s 1981 blockbuster, Business as Usual, began its commercial stranglehold in the U.S. Only one record on our list, Fleetwood Mac‘s chart-targeted Tusk follow-up, Mirage, hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200. (Doesn’t it seem weird, looking back, that Prince‘s 1999 peaked at No. 9?) Lots of fascinating shit was happening in 1982, and you didn’t always find it on the radio. On our list, we included everything from early hip-hop (Grandmaster Flash) to horror-punk (Misfits) to lo-fi synth-pop (Solid Space). Revisit...
The 50 Best Albums of 1971
It’s become a cliché, even for post-Baby Boomers, to look back wistfully on the early ’70s as some kind of untouchable golden age for popular music. But when you survey all the era’s best albums in list form, it’s hard not to trust that instinct. I mean…holy shit. In 1971, the psychedelic era hadn’t completely wilted; prog was nearing its popularity apex; Motown was still a revolutionizing soul music; the folk-rock movement was in full flight. The possibilities were limitless. You know it’s a banner year when 50 albums don’t begin to scratch the surface — when both John Lennon and Paul McCartney release definitive LPs and neither make the top 10. Was 1971 the greatest album year ever? We’ll save that debate for another time (or maybe another list). For now, we present 50 stone-cold cl...
The 101 Best Albums of the 2010s
Why now? Because — and there’s no reason to ignore the elephant in the room: SPIN stewardship has changed hands many, many times since we made the online jump — we got our chance. Because plenty of our favorite albums of the last 10 years could still use a boost. Because some of the already unanimously beloved music on this list still merits further praise. Because we relish excuses to sound off on the music that’s affected us the most and to enlist some of our favorite writers to do so. Because the works of art below serve as a reminder that the 2010s weren’t all bad. Because lord knows we need the distraction. Because it’s fun. There’s a lot of music that isn’t on this list. Which, duh, but plenty of artists whose work defined the decade for many, many people, including many of us, ...
