“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 Mark J. Marraccini’s 20 favorites below, click the “Next” button at the bottom of the page to browse the lists or return to the main index.
Bear’s Den | Red Earth & Pouring Rain
Communion (2016)
This is one of those albums I always tell people to check out. Its sprawling journey of personal stories surrounded by emotive guitars and sleek synths remind me of how late summer sunsets would sound if you could hear the colors of the horizon.
Blondie | Autoamerican
Chrysalis (1980)
I was in sixth grade when Blondie released this album and I remember bringing my vinyl copy to my elementary school’s “Show and Tell” day while my other classmates brought their favorite toys. That’s how into Autoamerican I was at the time. I love dipping back into this album because it’s so all over the place in its mix of new wave, reggae, swing, rhythm & blues (the list of genres they played with goes on…), yet it still possesses that subtly distanced Blondie “cool” that unifies the entire collection. Also, “Europa” is one of the finest album openers ever.
Mariah Carey | Butterfly
Columbia (1997)
Every time I want to hear some Mariah, Butterfly is always the first of her studio albums that I turn to. It’s the actual “Emancipation of Mimi” where she broke free of a doomed marriage and a tightly controlled artist image that surely would have pegged her in the Celine Dion lane for a majority of her career. On Butterfly, she was finally unleashed and, without fully abandoning the balladry that catapulted her to stardom, leaned into more rhythm & blues and hip-hop with songs that were playful, thoughtful, flirty and definitely “grown.”
Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach | Painted from Memory
Mercury (1998)
It’s so odd that I ever fell in love with this album in 1998 because I never really listened to either Elvis Costello or Burt Bacharach before. But the drama within the lyrics and the wrought emotions wrung out by the arrangements keep me coming back to this collection repeatedly.
Everything But the Girl | Amplified Heart
Atlantic/Blanco y Negro (1994)
I’ve written previously about how Amplified Heart is an album that has shown up for me whenever I’ve needed it most. It’s an album that never ages and always can drown out the chaos of the world and quiet my mind. Gotta put on emotional scuba gear for this one because it goes deep, but always brings you back to the surface in the end.
Janet Jackson | Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814
A&M (1989)
This album will always remind me of living in the top floor of my fraternity house in 1989 and blasting this CD constantly. I had come of age during the rise of 24-hour cable news and was blown away by an album that seamlessly integrated songs about how fucked up our country was with songs about love, longing and escaping to have a good time. It’s that rare artistic range in one collection that keeps me coming back to this album time and time again.
Labrinth | Imagination & The Misfit Kid
Syco (2019)
This album came out in 2019, but I know I’ll be returning to it years from now. There’s an unrestrained theatricality in its intricate stories and wild pastiche of arrangements that play like a soundtrack to a movie I’ve yet to see. I always find myself dreaming into the scenes and characters behind each song.
Lady Gaga | Born This Way
Interscope/Streamline/Kon Live (2011)
I applaud this album’s messy excess and grand excursions. It’s exactly what I wanted from an artist like Lady Gaga who’s a little rough around the edges herself. Every time I listen to Born This Way (a lot of times at the gym or on a run), the songs all remind me of rooms of the hotel in Madonna’s “Justify My Love” video—each room has a little something different for whatever you’re into, but the hotel is definitely the place to be.
Madonna | Ray of Light
Maverick/Warner Bros. (1998)
If you weren’t old enough to have started with Madonna in the early ‘80s, then you’ll never organically understand why Ray of Light is the most important album of her career. In the mid ‘90s after Madonna worked with Babyface and David Foster, aimed for serious performer cred with Evita, and released the ballad compilation Something To Remember, many of us who had been with her since the beginning felt she was on her way out. But Ray of Light proved she wasn’t done—she was just looking inward a bit more and gifted us a stunning, twilight-hued glimpse at the woman she had become.
Madonna | Music
Maverick/Warner Bros. (2000)
Whenever I want to hear Madonna, Music is the first album I return to. It’s loose and colorful and always reminds me of long nights on the dance floor at clubs like Roxy and Twilo in New York City or The Pavilion on Fire Island in the summer of 2000. The remixes off this album were EVERYWHERE during that time. The whole campaign surrounding this album era was flawless.
Madonna | Confessions on a Dance Floor
Warner Bros. (2005)
There’s a reason why this album is constantly referred to as a standard-bearer for dance pop albums: there are NO SKIPS (even “Isaac”—which I know some of you click right past). A course-corrector after American Life (which has aged really well), Confessions brought us full-circle back to the ’82 Madonna we danced with in “Everybody.”
Metallica | S&M
Elektra/Vertigo (1999)
I listen to this album in the gym ALL THE TIME and I’m not even a big Metallica fan. But I’m always quite moved by the absolutely cinematic arrangements between Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Pairing these two seemingly disparate music genres actually pushed the emotion behind Metallica’s songs to the forefront.
Alanis Morissette | Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie
Maverick/Reprise (1998)
This Alanis Morissette album is way more confessional and meditative than its predecessor, the record-breaking Jagged Little Pill (1995). I always return to Supposed because it laid the groundwork for the complicated and empathetic spiritual seeker that Morissette has become over the last couple decades. The album always felt like a big F-U to the Jagged era and I totally love that.
Pet Shop Boys | Very
Parlophone (1993)
Sure, I remembered “West End Girls,” “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” and “Always on My Mind” as a teen in the ‘80s, but I didn’t really connect with Pet Shop Boys until 1994 when I got a waiter job in a Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, restaurant owned by a gay couple. That’s when I first heard this album and began to appreciate the storytelling in Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s songs. It’s also when I began to connect with myself and start my journey of coming out—with Very soundtracking those first tentative steps.
Prince and The Revolution | Around the World in a Day
Paisley Park/Warner Bros. (1985)
Around the World in a Day gets repeat spins from me because it reminds me of the more playful and sonically exploratory side of Prince. While Purple Rain may get all the attention, and rightfully so because it showed how hungry Prince was, I’m more inclined to spin this follow-up because it presents what inspired him after he became massively famous.
Charlie Puth | Voicenotes
Artist Partner/Atlantic (2018)
It’s only two years old, but Voicenotes is a rare contemporary pop album that feels timeless to me. So many of the songs on Puth’s sophomore offering sound like they were conceived bassline first and it’s nearly impossible for me to ever play this album without singing along. No wonder why I own it on vinyl.
Duncan Sheik | Humming
Atlantic (1998)
I think it’s the slight cynicism in many of the songs on Duncan Sheik’s sophomore effort that hooked me originally when this album first came out. But over the years as my musical palette has broadened, it’s the string arrangements that I find myself constantly exploring further in depth every time I spin it.
Barbra Streisand | The Broadway Album
Columbia (1985)
I didn’t discover this album until the mid ‘90s, and even then I wasn’t a fan of musicals. I’m still not, but I love every song on this album because it introduced me to Barbra Streisand and her legendary talent as a lyric interpreter and performer. Because of this album, I grew to appreciate her voice, her career and her sense of humor.
Donna Summer | Live and More
Casablanca (1978)
I was nine when this album came out and remember carrying my vinyl copy of it around to places—that’s how much I obsessed over Donna Summer and this concert album. I definitely loved “Last Dance,” “I Feel Love” and “Love to Love You Baby,” but I remember being really moved by her ballad performances of “The Way We Were” and “Mimi’s Song” —both of which taught me at a very young age that there were more layers to Summer than just the “disco diva” label that she was given.
U2 | The Unforgettable Fire
Island (1984)
I have a strong bond with this album because my first concert was U2’s “The Unforgettable Fire” tour in 1985 (April 9, Pittsburgh Civic Arena). There’s an intelligence and a thoughtfulness throughout this entire collection that, compared to their previous releases, are finally given room to breathe. This was the album that forced the 16-year old me to pay closer attention to lyrics and sonics. It laid the groundwork for my eventual love of thought-provoking bands like R.E.M. and storytelling artists like Bruce Springsteen (who I ended up seeing live four months later).