“What really matters is what you like, not what you are like.”
– Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (1995)
Readers who have enjoyed our interviews from time to time know that we typically ask artists to share their five favorite albums of all time at the end of our conversations with them. No matter who the artist is, it’s always fascinating to discover which long players have impacted their personal and professional lives. A few of our interview subjects have even scoffed at the standard five-album limit, rattling off upwards of a dozen or so titles and second-guessing if they’ve made the right choices.
Today, and considering that we’re still in the midst of the year 2020, we’re excited to reveal our writers’ respective lists of their 20 all-time favorite albums. We all reserve the right to change our minds about these choices in the future, but for now, here are the indispensable albums that we can’t live without and the reasons why.
Explore Libby Cudmore’s 20 favorites below, click the “Next” button at the bottom of the page to browse the lists or return to the main index.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet | Time Out
Columbia (1959)
“I hear you’re mad about Brubeck…,” Donald Fagen sings in “New Frontier.” Well, I am now. “Strange Meadow Lark” just turns me to vapor, and “Take Five” can make anything—a bus ride, an evening in, a cubical—just a little bit cooler.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions | Blood and Chocolate
Columbia (1986)
“All the words of love seem cruel and crass / when you’re tough and transparent as armored glass” were the lyrics from “Crimes of Paris” that my friend Michael pointed out in the liner notes to a mix CD he made me in 2005, when I was 22. I loved the song then, but it wasn’t until I hit my mid-30s that I truly began to appreciate the wry poetry of Elvis Costello.
With something like two hundred gazillion albums to his name, it’s impossible to pick a favorite, but I always come back to Blood and Chocolate. It’s compassionately cruel, a cosmic joke whispered from the gallows, and even the fact that “I Want You” gives me panic attacks only makes it more compelling.
Miles Davis | Kind of Blue
Columbia (1959)
I received Kind of Blue as a gift when I started college and it taught me more about life than any textbook or teacher. Simultaneously stimulating and soothing, it is a lesson in focus, in discipline, in listening not just to what you hear, but what is truly being said. When there is nothing left of a shredded soul, I’ve learned, nothing can stitch the pieces back together quite like Miles Davis.
Donald Fagen | Morph the Cat
Reprise (2006)
This came out in 2006, when I was living in New York City and, as such, always makes me feel New York in a way that nothing else—except maybe a cup of Fairway coffee—can. “The Great Pagoda of Funn” is perhaps the purest love song ever written, and I’m not entirely convinced that it isn’t more about the late Walter Becker than it is about Libby Titus, with the “Pagoda” being the recording studio.
The Housemartins | The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death
Elektra/Go! Discs (1987)
We didn’t have The Housemartins for long—Paul Heaton formed The Beautiful South, Norman Cook became Fatboy Slim—but when we did have them, we got two albums of such beautiful brutality that we should have known then it couldn’t sustain. Lyrically bitter and musically unpredictable, Heaton rains down blow after blow upon the ruling classes without pause—even the haunting “Build” is thick in the political mire of what can be stolen with a smile.
JaR | Scene 29
CD Baby (2008)
Studio Gods Jay Graydon and Randy Goodrum put their heads together to create this smooth AF album that combines a sort of Steely Dan masterwork with quirky, strange little lyrics. Who else could pull off a noir-esque duet with a GPS voice?
Cyndi Lauper | She’s So Unusual
Portrait (1983)
It’s easy to forget, in the ‘80s pop landscape, that Cyndi Lauper was a straight-up punk. Determined to do things her way, she snatched up the misogynistic “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and instead, created a party anthem of female solidarity. She championed self-satisfaction five years before The Divinyls recorded “I Touch Myself” (and even better, her use of they bop makes sure our non-binary fam is included, because Goddess Cyndi says trans rights) and told scumbags like her ex-Blue Angel manager—who sued her into bankruptcy in the early ‘80s—to eat shit. Iconic.
The Magnetic Fields | 69 Love Songs (Volume 1)
Merge (1999)
The surest sign that I am in love with you is if I give you a Magnetic Fields song, and the majority of them come off this album. In love, love-lorn and every niche emotion in between, it’s all here. “All My Little Words” kills me every damn time.
Aimee Mann | Charmer
SuperEgo (2012)
Aimee gets it. Being a woman is impossible, full of niche emotions and frustrating contractions and marvelous stories of the weirdos we meet and date. Sympathetic whether they’re the hoarder of “Gumby,” the doomed couple of “Labrador” or the girl who lives in “Crazytown,” our bard/coolest aunt knows the only way to get through this life is with a little bit of humor and access to a guitar (or a record player).
Men at Work | Business as Usual
Columbia (1981)
In an arcade bar in Seattle, I came across a vending machine offering a card printed with the lyrics to Men at Work’s 1981 hit “Down Under.” “Impress your Tinder date!” it boasted. “Land that big promotion!” Of course, I bought one ($1.25), and my life has been better ever since. It said nothing about stopping a global pandemic, but let’s get cards printed up with the lyrics to “Helpless Automation” just in case.
The Mighty Lemon Drops | Laughter
Chrysalis/Sire (1989)
Originally criticized as a gloomy, Echo & The Bunnymen rip-off, the lads of the Mighty Lemon Drops decided to get cheeky by naming their next album Laughter. On “The Heartbreak Thing,” Paul Marsh sings “I’m so brave, I have no nerve / I always get what I deserve” and in this case, that bravery paid off giving the band two singles as they embraced a warmer, more jangly sound.
[Note: Laughter is not currently available via streaming services.]
The Replacements | Pleased to Meet Me
Sire (1987)
I have a reoccurring daydream whenever I hear “Alex Chilton” that I’m riding shotgun over country back roads with this tape in the stereo; I can see a man’s skinny wrist under an unbuttoned flannel cuff as he drums on the steering wheel, but I never see his face. It’s the perfect driving song on an album that pays homage to Iggy Pop and Tom Waits in addition to the Big Star frontman, a self-imposed constraint that polishes Paul Westerberg—not quite to a diamond, but more anthracite, glossy and jagged and burning so hot. I may never know who this mystery man is, but whoever he is, he has excellent taste in music.
Siouxsie and The Banshees | Superstition
Polydor/Geffen (1991)
It’s hard to pick one Siouxsie album but, if pressed, Superstition, which features “Shadowtime,” “Cry,” “The Ghost in You,” and “Kiss Them For Me,” has to take the prize. It’s unsettling, it’s exotic and it’s haunting in all the best ways, like a kiss of honey followed by a sting.
The Smiths | The Queen Is Dead
Rough Trade (1986)
My older sister gave me this album in my senior year of high school and I knew, from the moment I heard “The Queen Is Dead,” that my life would never be the same. It changed my whole musical outlook in a way few albums have, and helped defined the Me that would be through all of college.
Steely Dan | The Royal Scam
ABC (1976)
Aja may be the greatest Steely Dan album, but The Royal Scam is my favorite Steely Dan album. “Green Earrings” ranks high in my Steely Dan song rankings, and “Kid Charlemagne” is the Greatest Rock Song Ever Written. Fight me, I dare you.
Steely Dan | Two Against Nature
Giant (2000)
The album that brought Walter Becker and Donald Fagen back together and finally landed them a long-overdue GRAMMY proves that 20 years after the release of Gaucho (1980), the princes of dark sarcasm hadn’t lost their edge. Like a greatest hits album, it’s got a little something for fans of all shades, the polyrhythmic hellscape of “Two Against Nature,” the sad-sack in “What a Shame About Me,” the scheming dirtbag behind “Gaslighting Abbie,” and the impossibly lush arrangements of “Negative Girl” and “West of Hollywood.” Overlooked perfection.
The Vapors | New Clear Days
United Artists (1980)
If you only know the Vapors for “Turning Japanese,” you are missing the eff out. New Clear Days is one of my Nuclear Bunker albums, in that it’s a) awesome, and b) overshadowed with a lot of fears of nuclear holocaust with tracks like “Bunkers” and “Letters from Hiro.” But there’s a lot of fun to be had too, including the snarky “Spring Collection” and the fantastically love-sick “Waiting For the Weekend.”
The Vapors | Magnets
United Artists (1981)
It takes guts to lead off your album with an infectiously poppy tune about cult leader Jim Jones, but The Vapors frontman David Fenton never liked to play it safe—after all, nuclear war hovered over their debut, New Clear Days (1980). Mental illness, political assassination and dancing as the world ends isn’t always an easy listen, but the hooks are designed to sneak up on you days after you give it that first listen. Yo-Yo indeed.
Tom Waits | Rain Dogs
Island (1985)
A perfect Waits album, striking the proper balance between the noir bar ballads of his early Asylum catalogue and the bang-and-growl of what was to come. The tipsy piano that opens “Tango ‘Til They’re Sore” is one of my all-time favorite sounds on this earth.
Warren Zevon | Sentimental Hygiene
Virgin (1987)
My dad used to play this tape in the car on the way to church and, as such, it’s the Zevon album I know the best. I put “Reconsider Me” on a mix I made for a boy whose heart I had broken. He did.