Top 100 All Time

To be honest, this EP is just on this list because of that first song Graze. It’s just so good I’ve been listening to it non-stop this year. I mean...the other songs are good too. Little Birds also gets rolling. Overall, this EP is noisy, ethereal, and heavy. It’s a great 20 minutes to disappear into.

These last four spots on my list are for some really short albums / EPs.

What happens when two musicians get married. This is just a great romantic album between a couple of pessimists. It’s warm. It’s about two people giving themselves over to each other and embracing inevitable heartbreak. It’s vulnerable and honest. But overall, the strongest emotion here, is love. It’s drenched this whole thing.

These last four spots on my list are for some really short albums / EPs.

This is my favorite Christmas album on the list.

Not sure why, but xxx has been my go to these last couple years during the winter. It scratches that seasonal depression itch. It’s perfect for driving around on the day before Christmas Eve to get last minute presents for everyone while you hate yourself for being so last minute. And you’re alone for the holidays (but not really, you’re just driving in a car for a second). And it’s cold and rainy and everyone is wearing jackets.

These last four spots on my list are for some really short albums / EPs.

I’m not quite sure what genre this is. Chill emo punk? Regardless, I think it has this beautiful melancholic angst. The lonely figure in the album cover fits the mood of the whole album. It’s like this feeling of being alone in this vast sad empty world...which is why this is an emo album.

“It only gets worse I promise” and “I walk this earth all by myself” are my favorite off of this.

These last four spots on my list are for some really short albums / EPs.

This album is such a mess which is why I love it.

“Get high and breath underwater” is so weird and choppy. The piano loop makes no sense.....but I get the song stuck in my head all the time. It’s beautiful and messy.

This album is very lofi. “groceries” and “every time I hear your name called” are these nice romantic sounding songs but with just enough distortion and effects to make it feel a little more raw, understated, and emotionally nuanced.

This album is great because each track is a little surprising. It has energy, heart, and vulnerability.

Recommended to me by Uncle Chad!

It has this cool 80s punk sound but still feels really modern.

Valley Boy is my favorite song off this album. It has a really cool start with these moaning solo guitar strums going back and forth.

Artificial Life would be great for a montage of someone in college during a coming of age movie.

The only song I skip, is Who Are Ya... I’d delete that song if I could.

Good rock album. Sad Disco is the grooviest and most likely to get stuck in your head. Goddamn is a great song too. This whole thing is stacked...the guy’s voice is both awkward and incredible.

I’ve listened to this album so many times...it’s amazing how many different settings this album is appropriate for.

Thanks for the rec Dylan!

The 2nd best homework album of all time. Not as punchy as Zeros, but still really good. The best song on this album is Parallels.

This is probably the greatest homework album ever created. I listened to the Soft Moon all the time while finishing last minute papers in college.

There’s an intensity and repetitiveness that helps me lock in. Not a lot of lyrics to be distracting. And it’s dark and creepy enough to not let me fall asleep.

Regardless, this is great post-punk. Die Life is my favorite off this album.

Its more blues, but it’s so hazy. This guitar playing seems so loose but the sound is so dense.

I guess this is considered psychedelic? I mean...it must have been pretty trippy back in 1968. But listening in 2026, it just feels like an elevated blues record.

Little Miss Strange is a fun outlier that has a classic 60s pop rock sound.

This album feels like an excuse for Hendrix to just solo over everything. I honestly just don’t think Hendrix can help himself. He’s just so free with how he plays.

The riffs are cool. The drums are cool. It cultivates this really engaging tone that is very noisy and kicks ass.

Great background music for either narrating a noir detective movie, or for having a glass of fancy wine with a mistress at a fancy restaurant.

But I just like to listen to this when I read. It doesn’t get in the way of what I’m reading, and it’s very calm, simple, and classy. As far as Jazz goes, this is on the mellower side of things...which is what I appreciate.

I heard about Lenker’s solo album before I knew about Big Thief. Maybe Big Thief has fuller sounding songs....but this album in particular is very refreshing, and light, and romantic. I’ll listen to the whole thing twice in a row and not get sick of it.

I tried to figure out how to play “anything” on guitar to help in wooing Louise (this was before we were married). But I don’t think Louise really likes the song and I couldn’t play it well.

zombie girl is another good song here.

Ty Segall makes a LOT of music. But this album of his stands because none of the songs were actually his: it is entirely made-up of covers from old 60s/70s songs.

The entire album is drenched in this sludge, garage punk. The very first song, Low Rider, is this slow and methodical trudge, with a creepy throaty singer. Then there’s this strange, dark, alien, buzzing (which is very menacing, very cool, very fun)....and this is very different to the Low Rider song we hear at the beginning of the George Lopez show. But it’s still somewhat recognizable enough for it to be catchy and interesting. (And yeah, it’s cheesy that he uses a weird whisper at the end...but who cares, it’s fun. The album cover has a fudge sandwich).

And each song on this albums is this cool re-imagination of something old and vaguely familiar.

Isolation is a minimalist sort of song about loneliness when John Lennon sings it.. And then Segall’s version keeps the melancholy of the original, but adds on more sludge and heaviness. It’s gritty and fuzzy, but still slow and minimal. The tone is very much in line with garage punk, but his call and response with his guitar during the bridge is a perfect John Lennon impression.

So the simplest reason why I like this album: Ty Segall turns old songs into garage rock.

I feel like many punk albums can get old really fast. But this one never gets too screechy or whiny. Each song is totally unique.

Archangel Thunderbird, I’m a Man, and Hit it and Quit it, are probably the most fun on this album.

The Weeknd had like 100 producers working on this album. People like Diplo and Daft Punk gave this album a more upbeat edm feel.

90% of the songs on this sound the exact same, but it’s a good type of song. Kendrick is here. Lana Del Rey makes a quick appearance in an interlude. It’s perfect for driving on the freeway at night.

Lonely Night is my favorite on this, just because of the fun talk-boxy guitar synth thing. (Idk how they made the sound but it’s very cool)

The perfect amount of fuzz.

This album reminds me of walking home from school my sophomore year in High School.

I really enjoyed The Black Keys then. This is when I started listening to rock that wasn’t just The Beatles or Led Zeppelin. It was blues, but it felt really modern and approachable. This type of 2010s indie rock just scratches a certain nostalgic itch for me. These songs are great for the summer and are very easy to listen to. They’re very catchy, and still get stuck in my head on occasion.

If I heard this album for the first time today, it probably wouldn’t crack my top 100. But I’ve listened to these songs so much, they have sewn themselves into my brain. Howling for you is awesome. Tighten Up is awesome. Sinister Kid is awesome....it’s all....100% solid.

This is The Black Keys at their best. They are more grungy and gritty here. And while it’s less polished than their later stuff, the lofi-ness of this gives it a great mood.

Hard Row and Thickfreakness are my two favorites on this.

Alien apes is hilarious. It’s a song about evolution in a “Christian” album which was probably just put there in spite. But it’s fun. And I guess there’s meaning to it.... something about embracing where you’ve come from.

Already Here and Walking with Our Eyes Closed are both so catchy too.

And then with all the bells and whistles that they pulled out for these three albums...one of their last songs is just so simple and nice. The Great Homesickness is a song about longing for God. It’s just acoustic. And it seems like after all these albums of synths and funky guitar playing, they end up back with a heartfelt love song.

One Wild Life is a 3-part album trio. So I’m just gonna merge all three together in these three consecutive spots

Michael and Lisa Gungor are/were Christian musicians famous for their song Beautiful Things in 2010. They toured megachurches and were super popular in the Christian music scene. However, this album-trio is an expanded version of what religious music can be: It’s about them falling away from Christianity as an institution and instead finding joy/God/spirituality in the beauty around them.

Light is a song about their kid who was born with a heart defect. It’s about them being overwhelmed by the love they have for their kid, despite their expectations of having a “normal” kid being completely shattered.

Some of the songs though, veers towards cheesy and preachy, but you just have to roll with it. Despite the lyrics being incredibly on-the-nose, I do feel like the concepts they are exploring are awesome. They’re things I’ve thought a lot personally, and I felt they did amazing at bringing these things to life.

One Wild Life and Stronger Together are especially cheesy. But they are both so fun. Stronger Together is especially cool to hear. It’s groovy, and at the end it has all these cool harmonies and over lapping vocals. And the message of both songs isn’t bad....it’s just...direct.

“You” is a great song about Gungor’s relationship with God... starting from birth, becoming an atheist, and finding God within everything. In the middle it has this crazy distorted, sloppy guitar solo as Gungor sits in a dark spot of feeling alone as an atheist. The song ends by reverting back to Jesus but with a newfound depth. Calling Jesus the source of Light, Brahmin, teacher, etc.

But the album ends beautifully with a worship song, led by Lisa. The song is titled vapor (which is probably a nod to the temporary-ness of life explored in Ecclesiastes). But it sounds like a Psalm...where it’s like a direct prayer to God and talking about how all of nature worships God.

The first songs on this again are so fun and light, but it seems so technically precise it’s just fun to get on board with.

Whale is especially crazy. I get chills when listening to it. They have this cool back and forth scattered harmony run and then follow it with these crazy back to back to back to back to back phrases that seem so rushed and abrupt and powerful. It just hits you in the face.

Wonder gives me the chills too. It’s this light acoustic song that turns into this thicker song with these deep brass swells that sound better the louder it is.

At the heart of these songs is something very natural and honest.... Then everything explodes with synths and weird rhythms and it makes every that much more bright and colorful, while still keeping its essence of being authentic.

Van Halen was way better with David Lee Roth. This is a perfect hairband album. The first several songs on this especially are just so classic. Eruption? You Really Got Me??? It’s just cool.

This is edgy punk that isn't just fast guitar playing. Great for yardwork.

This is the only band that I can say I liked them before they were cool. This album came out right before “Feel it Still.”

I don’t really know how to describe this album...but it’s weird and unique. It’s that post-modern pop stuff I listened to a lot in late high school and college.

I remember making people listen to this CD in college whenever I was driving. Unfortunately the sound system in my Subaru Outback was probably pretty underwhelming, and people probably judged me for having this pink butt CD.

It’s the best album of all time.

I can picture my dad absolutely nailing the air drums on the back half of this album.

I remember the lyrics to Golden Slumbers painted above Kieffers bedroom when he was born.

I remember listening to Octopus’ Garden as a kid, then Here Comes the Sun..

I had a Beatles piano book and tried to play “I Want You (she’s so heavy)”.

It’s Abbey Road....it’s great.

I don’t know if anything musically genius is going on here. I actually thought the album was pretty mid when I first listened to when it came out.

But! The album coincides with Jollet’s memoir....and after reading the memoir, all the songs took on a whole new emotional weight. I have listened to this album so many times. I’ve gotten chills, I’ve teared up... These are great rock anthem songs, and it’s like they’re coming from the voice of a kid. It’s an album where Jollet looks back at his life when he was younger, and gave a voice to all these complicated feelings of navigating difficult family issues.

This album is about how he loves his dad, but also about how he was grateful and lucky that he overcame/escaped his terrible childhood situation. His brother didn’t.

And we meet all these people in Jollet’s life and we get to see Jollet try to process through his complicated upbringing as if we were a fly on the wall to a therapy session.

The best song is All These Engagements. Carry Me is a close 2nd.

This album is Nirvana at their best.

A few of my friends in Middle school were obsessed with Nirvana. But it took me awhile get on the same page...I eventually grew to kinda like a few songs on Nevermind.

Later, I was on a trip to Oregon with David, my freshman year of highschool. He made me listen to Scentless Apprentice on some big Skull Candy headphones... It was so loud and so grotesque, but I let myself get swept up in it anyways. The song really wrecked my brain...It was dark, twisted, and unsettling....but it was interesting. It was doing something totally unique, and was expressing something that I hadn’t really experienced in music before.

This album is great in the same way a horror movie is.

Skrillex is fun. This album isn’t just growly bass drops (while it does have a few).

Lots of other dubstep/brostep artists make songs that place sole emphasis on “the drop.” The non-drop parts are only about building anticipation....

But Recess is more of a pop album with some awesome dubstep drops. Songs like “Recess” or “Stranger” have fun intros and verses before we even get to their drops. Doompy Poop and Coast is Clear aren’t even dubstep songs. They’re just catchy, unique, and delightful.

This album blew my mind when I first heard it in highschool. I listened to it over and over again. There is not a single song on this that isn’t great.

This album wrecked my brain a little bit and helped me start listening to music with more soul and r&b influence.

David and Ethan recommended this album to me. They thought I’d like it cause it was “weird.” But it’s not that weird (maybe besides Redbone and California).

But this album fits such a specific mood. I remember trying to find other similar sounding albums to this just because I wanted to stay in this mood for a lot longer. (This is how I heard of Funkadelic and Erykah Badu)

Also, now as a parent....a couple of these songs hit a little harder.

This is riff city!!!

This whole album is built on these catchy blues riffs. And it’s like every band member is the main character. Everyone is making all these cool music choices, and nothing seems formulaic in this at all.

This is their most open and breathable album. It’s fresh and spacious, while also being built on these great grooves. Whole Lotta Love is my favorite song on here for this exact reason. Lemon Song is also very fun and has some great bass lines.

The top 3 songs on this are perfect.

This is some very cool mixture of garage rock with large anthem feels. It’s also a little emo, which might be because of their violin player who is a full-time time member of the band.

If I grew up listening to Kings of Leon, I might have had one of theirs here instead. But my family loves ATE. My uncle, Colton, started listening to them first. Then my mom and I also followed suit.

Mikell Jollet was a writer for Rolling Stone. He started his band after an interview with David Bowie, where David Bowie talked about “embracing the contradiction” when it came to song writing.

Each song from ATE feels like a contradiction of emotions. Each song is very angsty, and nostalgically romantic.

NOTHING ELSE SOUNDS LIKE THIS. Even Beach House hasn’t replicated the sound on this album.