Perfect albums under 35 minutes

28 minutes, eleven songs, one voice, one guitar, one piano overdub. Drake delivered the 1972 master tapes to Island's front desk in a plastic bag and left. The starkest great album ever made, and not one second missing.

Fourteen songs in 29 minutes, recorded in 1976 for around $6,400. Verse, chorus, gone. Punk rock's entire design document fits in the time it takes to do the dishes.

Twenty-nine minutes that redefined how fast and precise metal could be. Producer Rick Rubin stripped the reverb, the band stripped everything else. From “Angel of Death” to “Raining Blood,” there is no wasted motion in 1986's most violent record.

Eight songs of barely-contained menace from 1973, mixed first by Bowie and later, infamously louder, by Iggy himself. “Search and Destroy” opens; nothing afterward lets up.

Sabbath's heaviest album is also their shortest — about 34 minutes in 1971, guitars detuned for the first time into the sludge that birthed doom, stoner and a dozen other genres. Brevity has rarely been this heavy.

Thirteen originals in half an hour — the only Beatles album that's all Lennon–McCartney, with that opening chord as the starting gun. Pop economy has never been bettered, in 1964 or since.

Thirteen horror-punk anthems in about 25 minutes. Danzig croons about Martians and brain-eaters like a B-movie Elvis; the choruses are pure 1950s pop under the gore. Every second is quotable.

Greg Sage's 1981 answer to hardcore's speed obsession: slow down, stretch out, still finish inside 31 minutes. The ten-minute title track invented a brooding punk expansiveness that Nirvana spent a career repaying.

Two men, a battered keyboard and a drum machine, 1977. “Frankie Teardrop” is ten of its 32 minutes and remains the scariest thing rock has produced. Synth-punk, industrial and half of post-punk start on this record.

Smith's 1994 debut, recorded at home on borrowed four-track: nine songs, half an hour, whispered double-tracked vocals over fingerpicked acoustic. The intimacy that made him a legend, already fully formed.