Whether you listen to mumble rap, bubblegum pop, dad rock or something else (or all of them!)—it seems that secretly, we all like to think that we have the best taste in music.

Music is undeniably subjective and there is realistically no such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ taste. However, there is always a rush of validation that comes when your favourite artist picks up a Grammy, or your top track takes home Song Of The Year. It’s almost like a pat on the back which reassures you that, ‘yes, your taste is that little bit superior, thank you very much.’

Image: Instagram @taylorswift

If there was ever going to be a measuring stick for what makes a piece of music top tier, we’d trust the team over at Apple Music to have found it. For over a week now, Apple Music has been counting down its top 100 albums of all time and today, the final 10 have been unveiled.

With entries from modern pop titans, 90s superstars and revolutionary bands, the top 100 roundup is a fascinating capsule of the records and artists that have shaped culture over the past century. Notably for the pop girls; Pure Heroine by Lorde just made the cut in spot 96, preceding Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster at 89, SZA’s SOS at 72, and Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, which scored 30th place. Taylor Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) came in 18th, pipped by Adele’s 21 in the 15th slot. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours just missed out on the top 10, coming in at number 11.

Read on to see if your faves made the cut (and if they did, congratulations—we’d trust you with the aux).

According to Apple Music, the 10 best albums of all time are:

• 10. Lemonade by Beyoncé
• 9. Nevermind by Nirvana
• 8. Back to Black by Amy Winehouse
• 7. good kid, m.A.A.d city by Kendrick Lamar
• 6. Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder
• 5. Blonde by Frank Ocean
• 4. Purple Rain by Prince & The Revolution
• 3. Abbey Road by The Beatles
• 2. Thriller by Michael Jackson
• 1. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Lauryn Hill

Notably, the number one album was a breakout record for Hill, who became the first rap artist to take home Album Of The Year at the Grammys, when Miseducation won in 1999. That year, Hill also one four other Grammy Awards including Best R&B Album, Best New Artist, Best R&B Song, and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance.

Lauryn Hill at the 1999 Grammy Awards (Image: Getty)

See the full list of Apple Music’s 100 best albums of all time here.

Ella Sangster

Ella Sangster is a Digital Writer at ELLE and marie claire Australia. She formerly worked as the Digital Fashion Writer at Harper's BAZAAR and Esquire Australia, and has also written for Women's Health Australia and The New York Times.

There have been plenty list available that rank the top 100 greatest albums of all time. What makes this list different is that it compiles and aggregates data from other best of lists, including both critics lists such as Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums books and fan polls such as Q magazine’s 100 Greatest Albums Ever poll. The goal of this list to find not only the greatest albums of all time but also the most influential and culturally significant albums as well, so in addition to just the opinions of critics and fans to compile the list other metrics where used as well such as Billboard chart statistics, RIAA sales figures and several others to help determine the final rankings of the best albums.

This chart is not meant to be static and unchanging. It will be updated and recalculated from time-to-time as more data and information is added to the list.

In all 236 different albums were eligible for the list of greatest albums (

236 was Different Class by Pulp), and they span from the earliest days of rock in the 1950s through today, covering many different genres and styles of music. In the end these are the must have albums that every serious music fan should have in their vinyl, CD or mp3 collection.

Below you will find a short list of the top albums by decade and a chart of the entire top 100 list. You can also start at

100 Axis: Bold as Love by Jimi Hendrix and work your way through the list.

Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time was originally published in 2003, with a slight update in 2012. Over the years, it’s been the most widely read — and argued over — feature in the history of the magazine. But no list is definitive — tastes change, new genres emerge, the history of music keeps being rewritten. So we decided to remake our greatest albums list from scratch. To do so, we received and tabulated Top 50 Albums lists from more than 300 artists, producers, critics, and music-industry figures (from radio programmers to label heads). The electorate includes Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish; rising artists like H.E.R., Tierra Whack, and Lindsey Jordan of Snail Mail; as well as veteran musicians, such as Adam Clayton and the Edge of U2, Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan, Gene Simmons, and Stevie Nicks.

How We Made the List and Who Voted

When we first did the RS 500 in 2003, people were talking about the “death of the album.” The album —and especially the album release — is more relevant than ever. (As in 2003, we allowed votes for compilations and greatest-hits albums, mainly because a well-made compilation can be just as coherent and significant as an LP, because compilations helped shaped music history, and because many hugely important artists recorded their best work before the album had arrived as a prominent format.)

Of course, it could still be argued that embarking on a project like this is increasingly difficult in an era of streaming and fragmented taste. But that was part of what made rebooting the RS 500 fascinating and fun; 94 of the albums on the list are from this century, and 163 are new additions that weren’t on the 2003 or 2012 versions. The classics are still the classics, but the canon keeps getting bigger and better.

Written By

Jonathan Bernstein, Pat Blashill, Jon Blistein, Nathan Brackett, David Browne, Mankaprr Conteh, Anthony DeCurtis, Matt Diehl, Jon Dolan, Chuck Eddy, Ben Edmonds, Gavin Edwards, Jenny Eliscu, Brenna Ehrlrich, Suzy Exposito, David Fricke, Elisa Gardner, Holly George-Warren, Andy Greene, Kory Grow, Will Hermes, Brian Hiatt, Christian Hoard, Charles Holmes, Mark Kemp, Greg Kot, Elias Leight, Joe Levy, Julyssa Lopez, Angie Martoccio, David McGee, Chris Molanphy, Tom Moon, Jason Newman, Rob O’Connor, Park Puterbaugh, Mosi Reeves, Jody Rosen, Austin Scaggs, Karen Schoemer, Bud Scoppa, Noah Schactman, Claire Shaffer, Rob Sheffield, Hank Shteamer, Brittany Spanos, Rob Tannenbaum, David Thigpen, Simon Vozick-Levinson, Barry Walters, Jonah Weiner

• Arcade Fire, ‘ Funeral’

  Loss, love, forced coming-of-age, and fragile generational hope: Arcade Fire’s debut touched on all these themes as it defined the independent rock of the ‘00s. Built on family ties (leader Win Butler, his wife, Régine Chassagne, his brother Will), the Montreal band made symphonic rock that truly rocked, simultaneously outsize and deeply personal, like the best pop. But for all its sad realism, Butler’s is music that still finds solace, and purpose, in communal celebration.

• Rufus, Chaka Khan, ‘Ask Rufus’

  Fronted by Chaka Khan, one of soul music’s most combustible singers, Rufus built its mid-Seventies sound on heavy-footed, guitar-slathered funk. But after spending 16 months in the studio working on Ask Rufus, they came out with a record that gave their songs more room to breathe, anticipating the lithe, loose arrangements of Nineties neo-soul. Khan glided through the head-nodding “Everlasting Love” and the twisty-turny “Better Days,” and fans appreciated the adjustment: Ask Rufus was the group’s first platinum record.

• Suicide, ‘Suicide’

  These New York synth-punks evoke everything from the Velvet Underground to rockabilly. Martin Rev’s low-budget electronics are violent and hypnotic; Alan Vega screams as a rhythmic device. Late-night listening to “Frankie Teardrop,” a 10-minute-plus tale of a multiple murder, is not recommended. A droning voice in the wilderness when they appeared in the Seventies, the duo would influence bands from Arcade Fire and the National to Bruce Springsteen, who covered Suicide live in 2016.

• Various Artists, ‘The Indestructible Beat of Soweto’

  The greatest album ever to be marketed under the heading “world music,” this 1985 compilation of South African pop was a huge influence on Paul Simon’s Graceland that still sounds jarringly fresh today. Full of funky, loping beats and gruff, Howling Wolf-style vocals (most prominently from “goat voiced” star Mahlathini). With a sweet track by Graceland collaborators Ladysmith Black Mambazo (“Nansi Imali”), its badass joy needed no translation.

• Shakira, ‘Dónde Están los Ladrones’

  Long before she went blond and took her never-lying hips to the top of the American pop charts, Shakira was a raven-haired guitar rocker who’d hit peak superstardom in the Spanish-speaking world with her 1995 LP, Pies Descalzos. To keep up the momentum, Shakira enlisted Emilio Estefan to help produce her next LP, this stellar globetrotting dance-rock set, which blends sounds from Colombia, Mexico, and her father’s native Lebanon.

• Boyz II Men, ‘II’

  With their innocent romanticism and meticulous vocal arrangements, Boyz II Men became the most commercially successful R&B vocal group of all time. II includes two mammoth hits, courtesy of Babyface: “I’ll Make Love to You” and the audaciously baroque “Water Runs Dry.” But the group’s own Nathan Morris and Shawn Stockman composed II‘s most poignant moment, “Khalil’s Interlude,” a soft onslaught that’ll leave you sobbing in the fetal position: “I need shelter from the rain/To ease the pain of changing from boys to men.”

• The Ronettes, ‘Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes’

  More a Spanish Harlem street gang than a girl group, the Ronettes were pop goddesses dressed as Catholic schoolgirls gone to hell and back. Phil Spector builds his Wall of Sound as his teen protégée (and future wife) Ronnie Spector belts “Be My Baby” and “Walking in the Rain,” while songs like “I Wonder” and “Baby, I Love You” ache with hope for a perfect love that always seems to be impossibly ideal and just within arm’s reach.

• Marvin Gaye, ‘Here, My Dear’

  It’s one of the weirdest Motown records ever. Marvin Gaye’s divorce settlement required him to make two new albums and pay the royalties to his ex-wife – the sister of Motown boss Berry Gordy. So Gaye made this bitterly funny double LP of breakup songs, including “You Can Leave, But It’s Going to Cost You.” When he asks “Somebody tell me please, tell me please/Why do I have to pay attorney fees?” it’s one of the most strangely transfixing soul-music moments of all time.

• Bonnie Raitt, ‘Nick of Time’

  After being dumped by her previous label, blues rocker Bonnie Raitt exacted revenge with this multiplatinum Grammy-award winner, led by an on-fire version of John Hiatt’s “Thing Called Love” and the brilliant title track, a study in midlife crisis told from a woman’s perspective. Producer Don Was helped her sharpen the songs without sacrificing any of her slide-guitar fire. And as Raitt herself pointed out, her 10th try was “my first sober album.”

• Harry Styles, ‘Harry’s House’

  Harry Styles achieved pop greatness with One Direction, but he got even deeper on his own. In Harry’s House, his third solo album, he stakes his claim as one of his generation’s most savagely imaginative musical minds. It’s a vibrant, playful, vividly emotional song cycle about searching for different kinds of home. He zips from Tokyo-style city pop (“Music for a Sushi Restaraunt”) to disco flash (“Satellite”) to delicate guitar ballads (“Matilda”). “As It Was” has Harry at his most intimate and personal, yet blew up into a universal hit—it spent 15 weeks at Number One.

• Linda Ronstadt, ‘Heart Like a Wheel’

  Linda Ronstadt completed her transition from California hippie-folk darling to soft-rock queen on her chart-topping fifth album, covering Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Little Feat, and Kate and Anna McGariggle on the gorgeous title track. Her version of the Betty Everett oldie “You’re No Good” hits a perfect mix of desire and paranoia. Along with being a showcase for Ronstadt’s peerless versatility, Heart Like a Wheel is Seventies pop-rock craft at its sweetest and sturdiest.

• Phil Spector and Various Artists, ‘Back to Mono (1958-1969)’

  When the Righteous Brothers’ Bobby Hatfield first heard “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” with partner Bill Medley’s extended solo, he asked, “But what do I do while he’s singing the whole first verse?” Producer Phil Spector replied, “You can go directly to the bank!” Spector built his Wall of Sound out of hand claps, massive overdubs, and orchestras of percussion. This box has hits such as the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron,” which Spector called “little symphonies for the kids.”

• The Stooges, ‘The Stooges’

  Fueled by “a little marijuana and a lotta alienation,” Michigan’s Stooges gave the lie to hippie idealism, playing with a savagery that unsettled even the most blasé clubgoers. Ex-Velvet Underground member John Cale produced a primitive debut wherein, amid Ron Asheton’s wah-wah blurts, Iggy Stooge (né James Osterberg) snarled seminal punk classics such as “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “No Fun,” and “1969,” bedrock examples of the weaponized boredom that would become a de rigueur punk posture.

• Black Flag, ‘Damaged’

  MCA refused to release this album, denouncing it as “immoral” and “anti-parent.” High praise, but Black Flag lived up to it, defining L.A. hardcore punk with Greg Ginn’s violent guitar and the pissed-off scream of Henry Rollins, especially on “TV Party” and “Rise Above,” which came with the timeless smash-the-glass salvo “We are tired of your abuse/Try to stop is but it’s no use.” Punks still listen to Damaged, and parents still hate it.

• John Mayer, ‘Continuum’

  After establishing himself as a post-Dave Matthews heartthrob, John Mayer grew into his soul and blues ambitions for a subtly crafted album aided by ace musicians like guitarists Ben Harper and Charlie Hunter, drummer-producer Steve Jordan, and jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove — from the smooth Hi Records-tinged soul of “Vultures” to “Waiting for the World to Change,” a deceptively knowing and self-aware take on generational apathy.

• Richard and Linda Thompson, ‘I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight’

  With Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson was one of the first prominent Sixties folk rockers to look to his native England’s traditions for inspiration. After leaving Fairport, he joined with his wife, Linda Thompson to make stellar albums in the Seventies. Richard played guitar like a Sufi-mystic Neil Young; Linda had the voice of a Celtic Emmylou Harris. Bright Lights is their devastating masterwork of folk-rock dread. Radiohead even picked up some guitar tricks from “The Calvary Cross.”

• Lady Gaga, ‘Born This Way’

  “Over-the-top” isn’t an insult in Gaga’s world; it’s a statement of purpose. Her second album is a work of blessed bombast, all arena-size sonics and Springsteenian romanticism, complete with a Clarence Clemons sax solo. There’s a thumping, half-in-Spanish song that proposes marriage to “a girl in east L.A.” (“Americano”), a synth-pop jam that includes a come-on on to John F. Kennedy (“Government Hooker”), and a touching ballad about a guy from Nebraska (“You and I”). Fittingly, the glam-slam title track became an LGBTQ anthem.

• Muddy Waters, ‘The Anthology’

  Muddy Waters started out playing acoustic Delta blues in Mississippi, but when he moved to Chicago in 1943, he needed an electric guitar to be heard over the tumult of South Side clubs. The sound he developed was the foundation of Chicago blues — and rock & roll; the thick, bleeding tones of his slide work anticipated rock-guitar distortion by nearly two decades. The 50 cuts on these two CDs run from guitar-and-stand-up-bass duets to full-band romps — and they still just scratch the surface of Waters’ legacy.

• The Pharcyde, ‘Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde’

  These high school friends from L.A. were a little like a West Coast answer to De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, offering their own spin on alternative hip-hop in the Nineties and showing there was something going on in Southern California beyond G-funk. They rapped about innocent topics, like having a crush on a teacher in “Passin’ Me By,” which was a small hit, but also about dating a cute girl who turns out “to be a John Doe” and run-ins with the cops (the Public Enemy-homage “Officer”). It all came out as bright and refreshing as sorbet.

• Belle and Sebastian, ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’

  Being a self-pitying shut-in has never sounded better than it does on the Scottish twee icons’ breakthrough. The chamber-folk arrangements are second to none — like a cup of tea brewed for you by a hopeless crush with a really good record collection — but don’t sleep on Stuart Murdoch’s subtly sardonic lyrics on “The Stars of Track and Field” and “Seeing Other People,” which give these wistful-sounding songs a bite that sets them apart from most imitators.

• Miranda Lambert, ‘The Weight of These Wings’

  The Nashville superstar sounded especially free and artistically uninhibited after her divorce from Blake Shelton, and she channeled it all into this expansive, mind-clearing two-CD set, an ambitious grab bag of deep breakup tunes (“Use My Heart,” “Tin Man”), Radiohead-y alt-rock moodiness (“Vice”), eye-rolling, scuz-guitar glam (“Pink Sunglasses”), and tender reflections on the bonds and weights of messy commitment (“Getaway Car”). It’s the sound of bad history falling away in the cracked rearview and nothing but wide-open road ahead.

• Selena, ‘Amor Prohibido’

  Tejana star Selena Quintanilla-Pérez may not have been long for this world (she died when she was just 23), but she remains one of America’s most beloved singer-songwriters. At the heart of her regional Mexican masterwork, Amor Prohibido, is a universal, glittering pop core. The techno-cumbia title track tells the real-life story of her grandparents, who fell in love across class lines. It’s a Latina fairy tale, if ever there was one. Amor Prohibido, meaning “forbidden love,” became one of the bestselling Latin albums of all time.

The Kinks, ‘Something Else by the Kinks’

Something Else was a commercial flop that nearly killed the band, but it shows off Ray Davies’ genius for writing about the secret lives of everyday people. “Waterloo Sunset” is a gorgeously chilly ballad about a lonely man watching lovers from his window; “Two Sisters” celebrates a housewife dancing around her house with curlers in her hair. He’s got poetic compassion for all these characters, even as he witnesses their private pain in “No Return,” “Afternoon Tea,” and “End of the Season.”

What are the top 10 albums of all time?

Explore the top 10 albums below..

good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012), Kendrick Lamar. ... .

Songs in the Key of Life (1976), Stevie Wonder. ... .

Blonde (2016), Frank Ocean. ... .

Purple Rain (1984), Prince & The Revolution. ... .

Abbey Road (1969), The Beatles. ... .

Thriller (1982), Michael Jackson. ... .

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), Lauryn Hill..

What is the best

Albums with two references for their estimated actual sales include sales through BMG Music Club. Albums with three references for their estimated actual sales include sales through BMG Music Club and Columbia House. The best-selling album in the United States is Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) by the Eagles.

What is the number 1 album in history?

Michael Jackson's Thriller, estimated to have sold between 70-100 million copies worldwide, is the best-selling album ever. Jackson also currently has the highest number of albums on the list with five, Celine Dion has four, while the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Madonna and Whitney Houston each have three.

What are the 25 best selling albums of all time?

The 25 Best-Selling Albums of All Time.

AC/DC: Back in Black. ... .

Fleetwood Mac: Rumours. ... .

Whitney Houston (Various Artists): The Bodyguard Soundtrack. ... .

Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin IV. ... .

Shania Twain: Come on Over. ... .

Eagles: Hotel California. Year: 1976. ... .

Eagles: Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975. Year: 1976. ... .

Michael Jackson: Thriller. Year: 1982..