The 50 best rock albums of all time, ranked
For those about to rock, we salute you.
As soon as guitars went electric, music changed forever. Allied to the power of crazy drummers, rhino-like bass players and flamboyant frontmen, the era of rock was and is an unstoppable force of nature; a primordial attack that engages with the listener heart first, head second.
But what were the best of the best? The timeless records that will still be with us in 50 years' time, when their creators are pushing up the daisies? There's some serious competition, but we've tried our best to select the very best rock albums ever made...
________________________________________________________________
50. Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell
After the huge success of Bat Out Of Hell, Meat Loaf and songwriter Jim Steinman endured a torrid personal relationship, with a serious of financial and legal disputes preventing a sequel - Steinman would end up using tracks he had written on his own Bad For Good album. Thankfully for fans, 16 years after the original album, they finally teamed up again to record the follow-up. Any fears that it wouldn’t match up to the original were soon put to rest by the 12-minute opening opus I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That), which was duly an enormous hit. Steinman and Loaf never really did understated, and the rest of the record was a rip-roaring rock ride back into the furnace of hell.
49. The Darkness - Permission To Land
Look past the catsuits, past the moustaches, past the jokey videos and you will find an almost faultless rock record underneath. The messy follow-up album and band split (they're back together now though) has obscured the fact that there was a reason this album catapulted The Darkness to acclaim: it's incredible. Ten tracks of brilliant riffing, superbly constructed songs and virtuoso guitar playing with their influences worn proudly on their sleeves. Plus, any band that can make a genuinely moving track featuring lyrics about ping-pong and badminton deserves their place on this list.
48. Muse - Absolution
The culmination of a trio of great albums which marked Muse out as far more than Radiohead-copyists, Absolution is a beast of a rock record. Darker and heavier than the preceding two albums - which took them away from indie towards full-on rock, producer Rich Costey helped bring the band to a bigger sound than previously heard. They never looked back, pushing on to become the stadium-fillers seen today. Bonus points for Hysteria becoming the bass players’ equivalent to Stairway To Heaven.
47. The Small Faces - Ogden's Gone Nut Flake
A concept record with a title to match, this was the creative peak and last act of frontman Steve Marriott. A quintessentially British affair, it featured psychedelic elements in both music and lyrics, a story about a boy named Happiness Stan - narrated by Stanley Unwin - and a host of memorable tracks. Lazy Sunday was originally written as a joke about arguments with Marriott's neighbours and released against the band's wishes. You can't keep a good tune down though, and it duly raced to No.2.
46. Whitesnake - Whitesnake
A defining record of 1980s power rock, Whitesnake was a white-knuckle ride through an array of big production, huge tunes, David Coverdale’s powerhouse vocals and the virtuoso guitar skills of Adrian Vandenberg. Featuring two enormous hits in the shape of the rerecorded Here I Go Again (originally featured on their 1982 album Saints & Sinners) and the power ballad Is This Love, it was a huge crossover hit.