Might 22, 2024
UPDATE
Apple Music reveals high 10 albums of all time on 100 Finest 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 Finest Albums checklist culminates at this time 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, however it’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 document producer, author, and performer Nile Rodgers and Grammy-nominated artist and producer Maggie Rogers to replicate on the checklist throughout a particular roundtable broadcasting globally at this time on Apple Music. Watch the complete roundtable at music.apple.com.
Apple Music’s 100 Finest Albums is a contemporary Twenty first-century rating of the best data 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, absolutely unbiased of any streaming numbers on Apple Music — a love letter to the data which have formed the world music lovers stay 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, weak, 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 realize 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 needed to share.
Maggie Rogers (MR): I used to be in faculty when this document got here out, and I bear in mind hitting play on my laptop computer in my condominium, 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 at this time… What I hear greater than something is her energy and the best way it’s coupled along with her vulnerability. There’s such an exposition of feminine energy on this document.
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 grew to become pop, grunge grew to become 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 linked to it really feel like we lastly had a band, an actual band that was ours. And all of the issues we preferred that appeared disconnected and appeared misplaced and weren’t being taken severely — it was like oh, you’re taking us severely now.
MR: The vulnerability of this document, 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 needed to be nice. They needed to put in writing nice songs. They needed to provide 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 liked whereas nonetheless being true to the trash-talking, self-effacing millennial she was. The sound of Again to Black would possibly attraction 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 instances for the dance flooring, at instances to sing alongside to, at instances 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 instances once I hear an artist attempt to reference one thing up to now, I’m at all times like, I might form of simply reasonably have the unique factor… However Amy Winehouse did it in a approach that really 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 data 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 a vital instance of American storytelling that established the longer term Pulitzer Prize winner as maybe his technology’s most completed author.
ZL: This is likely one of the most fantastically curated, created, structured, and track-listed albums of the fashionable period.
ED: Compton simply had delivered a lot hip-hop that there was lots of strain on this child. The flexibility to ship tales, bars, vitality, efficiency on recorded materials… He delivered on a Black consciousness that you just don’t at all times get in hip-hop. And that’s why I’m actually pleased with the truth that it ranks the place it does on this checklist.
6. Songs within the Key of Life (1976), Stevie Surprise
In 1974, Stevie Surprise was probably the most critically revered pop star on this 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 grew to become, 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 rather more than a big assortment of songs — it types a whole worldview.
NR: For me, it doesn’t matter what instrument he’s enjoying, he type of speaks with the identical voice. It’s an actual distinctive reward. His singing, his harmonica enjoying, his keyboard enjoying all seems like Stevie Surprise.
ZL: It’s iconic. He nonetheless continues to have such an infinite presence and affect on artists at this time, 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 document 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 modifications of the second decade of the Twenty first century.
ZL: It’s music placed on canvas. I take a look at the canvas by way of totally different gentle at totally different instances of the day, relying on how I really feel. And I see strokes of coloration 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 someway make sense in another way each single time.
MR: This document looks like smoke rising, it’s so delicate and so unpredictable and so exact.
4. Purple Rain (1984), Prince & The Revolution
With half its observe checklist comprising high 10 singles, this soundtrack is what really turned Prince Rogers Nelson into one of the immediately recognizable and distinctive pop artists ever. Prince typically drew comparisons to Jimi Hendrix for the best way he blended music that felt Black and white, sacred and profane. The truth is that he had no precedent then and no comparability now.
ED: Prince is my favourite artist of all time. Indubitably. You can level to the whole lot 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 path. He did his personal vogue design. That was all him.
NR: When you consider artists who’ve had such a serious impression 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 the whole lot round this document was simply so superb. And it simply put me in such a spot of respect and happiness. And identical 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 this planet the identical time he was on this 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 inventive peak. The band’s eleventh and penultimate album seems like nothing kind of than 4 extraordinarily gifted people enjoying one indelible track after one other in the identical room collectively.
MR: There’s something so particular about making music the place you might have a track that’s describing a number of the best human ache or sorrow subsequent to a track that you’d fortunately play to your 3-year-old, subsequent to one of many best love songs… It’s timeless, however not simply in the best way that it’ll final endlessly, however in the best way that there’s one thing for each second of humanity and each human feeling on this document. It’s for folks of all ages.
NR: There’s one thing concerning 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 instances in life. I believe The Beatles have the songbook of life.
2. Thriller (1982), Michael Jackson
There are few pop albums, and even artworks, that denote a wholesale shift in time and area 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 unique cuts had been high 10 singles, and it grew to become one of many bestselling albums ever made.
ZL: Not solely did it outsell the whole lot in its opening 12 months, it outsold the whole lot 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 document, 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 non secular panorama not simply of one of many period’s greatest 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 contemporary and extra related the extra you take heed to it… There are lots of younger artists listening to it, and it’s changing into a part of their creative DNA. It’s inspiring and influencing them… It’s timeless.
MR: Lauryn introduced everyone along with her on this document. She introduced her neighborhood. She introduced her associates 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, meaning loads.
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 unbiased girls, robust girls, it’s topical, it’s sampling… I believe that’s why it received voted primary.
NR: She’s superb. This document is superb.
Watch the complete roundtable dialog with Nile Rodgers, Maggie Rogers, Zane Lowe, and Ebro Darden at music.apple.com.
As an extra reward 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 Finest 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 Finest Albums particular content material throughout the Apple ecosystem on the App Retailer, Apple Information, Apple Retail, apple.com, and extra. Moreover, they will discover a 100 Finest Albums devoted area on Apple Books, which celebrates titles by and about artists from the checklist.
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