2,020 Albums You Must Hear Before the World Ends

SOME OF YOU MAY BE FAMILIAR BY NOW, OF THE 2006 PUBLICATION TITLED 1001 ALBUMS YOU MUST HEAR BEFORE YOU DIE, a popular list that I've been personally obsessed with ever since I first came across it. Consider it the personal folly of a typical listophile but while a part of me has a certain degree of respect toward an 'official' publication (that happens to get re-published and 'updated' with up-to-the-date entries every couple years or so) it's predictable that with admiration, comes frustration at the picks that are usually presented. Everyone has their personal tastes after all, and it's difficult if not impossible to present a completely unbiased product if you want your list to have the broadest respect obtainable, without slipping in choices that readers may challenge aren't universally representative of music's highest accolades in history. It can definitely brew resentment, yet there's a measure by which one is always living up to in the back of one's mind when putting a list together like this.

And thus, if you haven't guessed by now this list originally started as something of a 'counter' to the official publication. I do have appreciation to a certain respect over the choices that an official publication like 1001 ended up choosing, so there's a pedigree to measure up to for sure. But I can't help but pick at all the areas where I feel like 1001 really dropped the ball. I found there's a whole swath of bands and artists that blatantly get ignored or simply 'cut' from the final product that is the official list.

Therefore, using the criteria of the 'official' 1001, here is a 'counter-offering' to my readers of my own list which is TWICE as long, and under an even gloomier title. As a fellow Listal veteran pointed out in the comments, it's sad but appropriate when considering the times that we live in...

I researched and scoured and looked every which way I could find recommendations and trying out new sounds, and challenging my 'old' tastes in music, some of the entries you may find on this list while they may not be my personal choices in recommendation it is with recognition for their contribution to the evolution of music over the decades, and exploring the highest potential that the 'album concept' can offer aspiring artists to mold, that I chose to include them. So in other words, while seizing opportunity wherever I can glean such to include my own personal biases, the majority of this list may not necessarily be what I would personally hope a list like this to look like but more like what I can conceive editors of an official publication like 1001 could potentially choose. If that makes any sense?

If I can suggest what albums must have got left on the cutting room floor when 1001 or any other official publication for that matter, was busy putting together their list(s), this is what I hypothesize. Hope my readers appreciate what they find as it's been one long exhausting, anal journey of mine, tediously constructing this thing together. And feel free to check some of these out because what's mine is yours and so I offer up to you our swan song background soundtrack to the end of the world.

Special thanks, and links, go to a few fellow Listal alumni, who's tastes I've gleaned recommends from in the process of putting this whole thing together, if you wanna check out their shit, please click below:

My 600 Favorite Albums Of All Time by Pandoras Folly
Every Good Album. by Ueno_Station54
Why The 80's Are So Great Musically... For This by Dark Warrior
Best Albums of 2000, Best Albums of 1999, Best Albums of 1998, Best Albums of 1997, Best Albums of 1996, Best Albums of 1995, Best Albums of 1994, Best Albums of 1993, Best Albums of 1992, Best Albums of 1991, and Best Albums of 1990 ...all by Stehako

ALBUMS TALLY:

14 albums

.

13 albums

.

12 albums

.

11 albums

.

10 Albums

.

9 Albums

.

8 Albums

.

7 Albums

.

6 Albums

.

5 albums

.

4 albums

.

3 albums

.

2 albums

.

1 album

.

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