7 mo. ago • 65%

[music] is there/ was there/ will there ever be a perfect album?

Every album I've ever encountered seems to have a mixture of bangers and one or more meh or outright flops. It's easier than ever to skip over the tracks now, but as the question asks: what's is, in your opinion, the perfect album, or does one/can one even exist?

74 comments

I feel like the perfect album can exist for anyone. Sometimes an album hits just right at a specific time in your life. It becomes the background soundtrack for your day to day life. For me, it is The Postal Service's Give Up. There are so many reasons I love that album and to me there are no throwaway songs. It feels altogether ephemeral for me.

So yeah, it's highly subjective, but I think it's possible for all of us to experience music on this level. I hope you one day experience it, OP.

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- Heh. For me, in college in the early 90s, nirvana, green day, Soundgarden, etc. But yeah, there's always one that doesn't quite seem to fit. Lol
  
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No, but there can be perfect albums for an individual.

For me, there's a decent number. I tend to have broad taste in music, so I have the advantage of genre access in this kind of thing.

Master of Puppets, Metallica, was the first perfect album I ran across. Not a single track I wanted to skip, and it's still pretty much impossible for me to make a playlist that includes Metallica that doesn't have the entire album on it. For years, I would play it to go to sleep to, my tape deck could auto flip, so I would just dub a few from the vinyl (showing my age here lol) and use them for that.

Iron Maiden's Somewhere in Time is another.

Adele, 21 is brilliant from front to back.

Tracy Chapman, New Beginning is a fucking masterpiece.

Springsteen's Born in the USA is perfect.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, the album by that name is a great one.

Depeche Mode, Violator. There's not a stinker on it.

Guns & Roses, Appetite for Destruction was and is a perfect album for sure.

John Lennon did it with Imagine, though barely; there are a couple of tracks that aren't as good as the rest, but they're still amazing overall.

Linkin Park could have two; One More Light is definitely perfect in my ears, and hybrid theory is right there with it, though I don't mind skipping a couple of tracks off of HT sometimes.

Nappy Roots managed a perfect hip-hop album (which isn't actually easy with me) in Watermelon, Chicken and Grits. Sublimely perfect southern rap. Every track a winner.

Biggie did Ready to Die, and I'd argue it's the second best hip-hop album of all time.

The greatest is Run-DMC with Raising Hell. How can you top that album as a whole? Every track a banger, every rhyme a killer.

The list could go on. Obviously, I tend to lean into rock, metal, and hip-hop as my most listened genres, but there's at least one album for me in almost any genre. I'm sure if I delved deeper in some, I would find more.

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- I've gone though a few of these lol. We must be the same age. Ish.
  
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Plenty. There are literally hundreds of albums in my collection that I'd consider "perfect," the first one I ever realized as one was Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the most recent probably being Hellfire by Black Midi. What type of music do you listen to? I can try to give some more relevant suggestions for you based on that.

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- Bowie also had Man Who Sold the World and Station to Station.
  
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- Me, I move between genres, so on the one hand I'll do alternative (nevermind, garbage 2.0), then I'll flip to crossover classical (bocelli, always), some metal/ rock, sometimes to OST or anime. Just looking for suggestions, or to spark discussion.
  
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I was wondering the same thing and then I found Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon.

So the answer is yes, my perfect album exists.

And then I found Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here, and I realized two perfect albums exist for me, so far

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Queen - A kind of Magic

Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill

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- Jagged Little Pill is the first album that comes to mind for this question, but if I'm honest I'd skip the track "Perfect".
  
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Surprised nobody mentioned Rumors by Fleetwood Mac.

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- This album is one of the greatest album OAT in my book, like top 5. A perfect album with no dulls, one of the best exemples of what a 10/10 is.
  
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- It's only gets mentioned every time someone asks this question.
  
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  Looks like I've become 'that guy'
  
  lol
  
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- It's a great album but there is one song on it that is pretty mid, Oh Daddy. I don't think it can be called the perfect album
  
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  I disagree. I know that one's not as typical/upbeat as much of their other stuff, but I think it carries just as much weight and is a powerful song that helps complete the album.
  
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- Giving it a listen! Thanks for the recommendation.
  
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  of course!
  
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Paul Simon - Graceland is utterly unique and every track is a masterpiece

The same can be said for Pink Floyd - The Wall

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Perfect is in the eyes (or ears, in this case) of the beholder. A song can sound like the best thing you've ever heard, and you could make an entire album out of it, but the pursuit of perfection is futile.

Ask any artist if they've ever released a perfect album, there will not be a "yes". Every artist is keenly aware of their own faults/shortcomings and end up thinking about what tracks they would have done better. You could have someone make music for a thousand years and they'd still think of something else they could have done the next day. And even then, what sounds better to an artist may not sound better to their listeners, so perfection is simply not worth wasting brain space over.

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- Good point. Let me ask then: which is your perfect album?
  
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As other have said, it's subjective, but here are some albums I'd consider perfect:

R.E.M. - Murmur, Reckoning, Lifes Rich Pageant, Automatic for the Prople

Orbital - In Sides

Marvin Gaye - What's Going On

Leftfield - Leftism

Beatles - Abbey Road, Sgt Pepper

Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space

Underworld - Second Toughest in the Infants

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue

Massive Attack - Blue Lines

John Coltrane - Blue Train

Velvet Underground - Velvet Underground and Nico

Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited

Nas - Illmatic

Portishead - Dummy, Portishead

Chemical Brothers - Exit Planet Dusr

Tricky - Maxinquaye

Jim White - The Mysterious Tale of How I Shouted Wrong-Eyed Jeaus
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- Blue Lines over Mezzanine? I usually mention Mezzanine in threads like this because the fact it was released in 1998 really doesn't come across at all.
  
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  Blue Lines over Mezzanine?
  
  Every day of the week - don't get me wrong, Mezzanine is great, but for me Blue Lines is absolute perfection :-)
  
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Pink Floyd: the dark side of the moon

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F♯ A♯ ∞ by Godspeed You! Black Emperor

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Eve 6 's debut album.

Jesus Nightlight is the only speedbump, but that's mostly due to placement. If it was the closing track, it would have been a totally different experience.

Disregarding that one song being in an inopportune position, it's the only perfect album I know of.

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- I need to learn to listen to albums as a whole, not as a collection of tracks. But that's just me.
  
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Dave Brubeck - Time Out

Miles Davis - Birth of the cool, Kind of blue

I don't think anyone's going to disagree with this
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Perfect albums that come to mind :

Pink Floyd - Animals

Depeche Mode - Violator

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

Dire Straits - Dire Straits

Curtis Mayfield - Superfly

Daft Punk - Discovery

Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Sseventh Son

Death - Symbolic

Rush - Moving Pictures

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- Wallflowers - Bringing Down the Horse
  
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- You fucked up the markdown. You need to put two newlines between or a bullet point before each line.
  
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  Or two spaces after a line.
  Like this. It renders tighter.
  
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  Thanks, corrected it !
  
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Let It Be by The Replacements

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Name the genre and I’ll give you one.

Edit: not like make the album, I’ll just tell you about one

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- Acid jazz
  
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  20 Jazz Funk Greats
  
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  I think TBNH by The Brand New Heavies may only have a less than optimal track but other than that it's absolutely fire
  
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- Alternative/ grunge.
  
  Or movie OST.
  
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  Nirvana unplugged in new York
  
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  Alt rock is broad, but if we’re going with grunge, I’d say Nevermind, although purists will say that’s not totally grunge. You run into similar issues with Ten. Both albums are insanely good start to finish though.
  
  In terms of movies, Bernard Hermann or Ennio Moriconne. Both had some bombs and also some bomb ass stuff. When they were on point they were amazing.
  
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  movie OST
  
  I find Arrival’s soundtrack by Johann Johannsson pretty much what you would consider a perfect album. All tracks are great. Obviously it’s a matter of taste at the end of the day.
  
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  Lord of the Rings OST by Howard Shore
  
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Tool – 10,000 Days

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- Oh yeah that one's a good one
  
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In Extremo - Raue Spree (live)

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Beastie boys - Paul's Boutique Blackalicious - Blazing Arrow Against Me! - Reinventing Axle Rose Justice - Justice The Rapture - Pieces of the people we love

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Stoner witch by the Melvins

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- You spelled Houdini wrong
  
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The first three Sabbath records

The first three Ramones records

The first three Clash records

The first three Metallica records

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- Did you say "...and justice for all" wasn't perfect?
  
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  I did not. Honestly, it's been so long since I've listened to it all the way through that I can't comment. Time to give it a spin.
  
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French album for those who speak French : Les Étoiles Vagabondes - Nekfeu

Makes me go through all emotions, excellent writer. It is just the best album to me.

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- Haven't heard it, but I'll look it up. There's Italian. Japanese, Malay, etc in my collection. I don't really understand much, but some of the music is brilliant. Thanks!
  
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Deloused in the comatorium

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Didn't find one yet.
For me, in a perfect album would be songs which only have the same kind of feeling. You know, you won't switch from a sad song to the biggest banger. And the songs would be alphabetically sorted so that when you put them into directory, you don't have to keep deciding whether to have them sorted alphabetically or by track no., because they would be in the same order. But that's just my weird problem. Would be cool if it was same in chronological order.

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- Sounds like LMFAO is right up your alley 😅
  
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I've listened to so many albums so far that I can never ever decide on "the perfect one".

Let's just say it was the Celeste soundtrack, composed by Lena Raine.

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No. Next question.

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- Next question: Why is LibertyLizard so good at being wrong?
  
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  Lots of practice. Next question.
  
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