What are the best albums of all time?

Eejit

The Freeman
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Favourite song = too narrow and variable, favourite genre = we saw how that ended.

But what do you think are the best albums ever released?

I'll start (with a few of the very obvious picks), feel free to comment on them or others.

Rumours - Fleetwood Mac (1977)
Hugely influential, full of absolute classics and how the songs tie in to the band's interpersonal problems at the time is briliiant. Surprised it ever got made with all that going on, let alone that it was of such quality.

Back in Black - AC/DC (1980)
Second-highest selling album in history, #1 in it's genre. Again it's got tons of absolute belters on it. What a debut for a replacement lead singer.

What's Going On? - Marvin Gaye (1971)
Nothing short of a masterpiece. Flows together perfectly from one song to the next, it's not just a haphazard collection of singles. An early concept album and still one of the very best.
 
I'll have to think about this but off the top of my head Led Zeppelin III and IV both definitely make the cut.
 
honestly I know this thread is almost five years old but just because it's still at the top I'll give my five personal favorites each with sample songs (for posterity). in no particular order:

laughing stock - talk talk (1991)
post-rock and ambient and jazzy. i can only call it serene and religious--hollis sings with a kind of hushed, solemn quietness that grows loud in the dark parts

desertshore - nico (19somethingorother)
look, i know what you're thinking: "nico? that crooning haunting voice on the velvet underground's debut?" chanteuse and femme fatale though she was there, she strikes out a path of her own with just a harmonium and cale's vegetable-strident instrumentals--a singer-songwriter in her own right, and probably the best in the avant-folk genre of the 70s. this album to me is her crowning achievement--dark, morbid, deathlike, recalling cold cases of the late 90s

hounds of love - kate bush (1985)
i tucked this one away because of the 80s and the popularity of its singles and the style, but it opened up to me this year and revealed how beautiful it really, really is. i don't know what else to say--dreamy, ephemeral, romantic--it's like reading wuthering heights all over again, except the moors are disco dance floors and heathcliff's astride with catherine sporting platform shoes and a toque full of forget-me-dos

since i left you - the avalanches (2000)
because they resurrect dead voices and make them live again--because no one has ever made beach music so sad--because flip-flops and parties only go so well together under an umbrella of romance--because nothing has ever made leaving so much like living

in the aeroplane over the sea - neutral milk hotel (1998)
the bravest thing in music isn't to be experimental or to be layered in a thousand sounds--it's to sit alone in a room with a guitar and sing as if all life, and perhaps even lives yet unborn, depends on it. this song makes it that it does
 
honestly, as a reevaluation, i'd probably keep all these, but i'd want to put nick drake on there somewhere. like a pink moon or thoughts of mary jane
 
and then probably king crimson starless oh
 
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