Apple Music put together a list of the “100 Best Albums,” and it did not follow its old advice to “Think Different.”
The list, which was released in chunks culminating with the announcement of the top 10 Wednesday, would not look out of place in Rolling Stone, Time, Pitchfork, The Guardian, Entertainment Weekly, New Music Express, The Source, Spin or any of the myriad other publications that have taken a stab at this idea over the years.
“Nevermind”? No. 9. “What’s Going On”? No. 17. “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back”? No. 34.
For connoisseurs of the list-making genre, it’s more fun to parse it carefully to see the tough calls Apple inevitably faced as it made the list “with the help of artists and experts.”
Did the list-makers give extra weight to double albums? (Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life” is at No. 6, The Clash’s “London Calling” at No. 35, Prince’s “Sign o’ the Times” at No. 51 and The Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main Street” at No. 53.) Which Beatles album ranks highest? (They put “Abbey Road” at No. 3 and “Revolver” at No. 21 and skipped “Sgt. Pepper’s” entirely.) How diverse is the list? (About a third of the artists are women and about 40% are Black.)
Apple’s choices are as mysterious as its decision to keep changing the design of the power cords on the MacBook.
Then there’s the bigger picture, which is where Apple’s choices are as mysterious as its decision to keep changing the design of the power cords on the MacBook.
First, what exactly is the list measuring?
Most outlets that try their hand at a list like this limit it in some way, like the Best Rock Albums, the Best Hip-Hop Albums or the Best Albums of the 2010s, but Apple chose to just call this the “100 Best Albums,” saying it was “the definitive list of the greatest albums ever made.” Are they supposed to be the best thematically? The best collections, song by song? The most important historically? Apple doesn’t say.
And what kinds of albums are we talking about?
While hip-hop and rock are pretty well represented, the list gives only token nods to other genres, with one reggae album (Bob Marley’s “Exodus” at No. 46), one country album (Kacey Musgraves’ “Golden Hour” at No. 85), one folk album (Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” at No. 16), two punk albums (“London Calling” at No. 35 and Patti Smith’s “Horses” at No. 83) and three jazz albums (Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” at No. 25, John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” at No. 54 and Nina Simone’s “I Put a Spell on You” at No. 88). There’s no blues, no gospel, no world music and no live albums.
By comparison, R&B did pretty well, with nearly a dozen entries, but fans were still not happy about the absence of Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, among others. Legendary producer Jermaine Dupri criticized the list on Tuesday, writing on the social media site X that it was “sad” and “not worthy” and “the disrespect to R&B is CRAZY!!!!!” (To be fair, his tweet came out before the final 10, which put “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” at No. 1.)
A few years ago, music critics would have debated whether a list like this had fallen victim to “rockism,” the belief that pop music is not as important as four guys with guitars and black leather jackets. That prejudice was shown most vividly by Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner, who recently managed to write an entire book about rock music in which he interviewed only white men. Wenner then defended that choice by arguing that Black artists were not in his “zeitgeist” and women artists were not “articulate enough on this intellectual level.” But the problem here is deeper than rockism. Like Rolling Stone itself, the entire concept of an album, much less a list of best albums, is a relic of an earlier era in music. The LP (for younger readers, that stands for “Long Play”) was invented in 1948 and quickly became a popular format for classical music (not on Apple’s list), Broadway cast recordings (also not on the list) and especially jazz (barely on the list), where it arguably transformed the genre by allowing artists such as Miles Davis and Duke Ellington to stretch out their arrangements on recordings to match what they were doing in concert. The concept of an album was pioneered by artists as diverse as Woody Guthrie (“Dust Bowl Ballads”), Frank Sinatra (“Songs for Swingin’ Lovers”) and Ray Charles (“Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music”) — none of whom made the Apple list. The album’s real heyday came in the 1960s, when rock bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys elevated it over the single. But the album’s real heyday came in the 1960s, when rock bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys — all included on Apple’s list — elevated it over the single. Wenner and other critics of the era took it from there, arguing over whether “Highway 61 Revisited” was better than “Blonde on Blonde,” which albums should make the cut in the yearly list and who should be literally canonized with the annual inductions into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. (Though a co-founder, Wenner was removed from the museum board after his comments on Black and women musicians.) The album remains important, with artists like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift using the format to make a statement, explore a different genre or mark a new era in their personal life. But albums themselves are no longer a juggernaut, as music is now mostly streamed on services like Spotify and Apple Music, where algorithms, user-created playlists and professionally curated “Essentials” are the most common listening experience. Ironically, Apple wrote that its list was meant to be “a modern love letter to the records that have shaped the world we live and listen in today,” but it may be closer to a eulogy for a lost era of music, given by one of its killers.
Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MS NOW. 
