Lists

Grammy Best Rap Album winners

Every Grammy Best Rap Album winner since the category began in 1996.

Mercury Prize winners

Every Mercury Prize winner since the prize began in 1992. The UK and Ireland's album of the year, chosen by an independent panel.

Eurovision 2026: Grand Final winners, ranked

The songs of the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 Grand Final in Vienna, ranked by their final score. Bulgaria's DARA took the trophy with "Bangaranga" — the first entry since 2017 to win both the jury vote and the televote.

Essential Turkish rock & Anadolu psych albums

From 1970s Anadolu psych to the 2000s Turkish rock wave: 15 essential albums of Turkey's rock canon.

Essential indie & alternative albums

The independent canon: 20 albums from the Velvet Underground to the streaming era that define indie and alternative rock.

Brit Album of the Year winners

Every Brit Award for British Album of the Year since 1990.

Grammy Album of the Year winners

Every Grammy Album of the Year winner since 1990. The Recording Academy's biggest prize, for better and worse.

underground rap for people who hate the radio

No radio, no algorithm bait. DOOM, billy woods, Griselda, the whole left side of the map. Tap in and rate the bars.

the heavy shelf

not the forest-metal stuff for once. just the records i put on loud when i need something to actually move air in the room. sabbath and meshuggah up front, the rest earns its spot.

put on for the guitar playing

half of these i keep around for one player, not the songs. eddie still does stuff on balance i can't explain, anyway.

the ones i'd actually defend

half this pile is my dad's cd wallet, these are the keepers. modest mouse live is sloppy in the exact right way, nomeansno still the driest band that ever played fast. mount eerie's sauna is barely there and that's the appeal. anyway.

not the marvin they play at brunch

everyone's got the best-of. these ones live under it. 'you're the man' over half his hits, idk.

the soul crate

not the rap list. this is where the loops live before somebody chops them. stevie and al green do most of the lifting.

the ones that just drive

not my usual cologne-and-dusseldorf stuff, but the through-line is the same: keep the engine running and don't stop for a chorus. scorpions' lonesome crow from before anyone knew what they'd become, and motorhead live is basically motorik with the amps blown. headphones.

lives in my chest

not the loud stuff on my page. billy preston is the whole root of this feeling for me and steve lacy carries it now. the rest have that same warm ache running under them, scarface included. nothing auto-tuned over a real voice, that's the only rule.

put on for the guitar playing

half of these i keep around for one player, not the songs. eddie still does stuff on balance i can't explain, anyway.

warm even when it hits hard

the rap i reach for when i want it to feel like soul. billy preston opens it because that voice lives in my chest and never really leaves.

not from the forest

the loud end of my shelf, nothing atmospheric about it. sabbath and motörhead are the taproot of every cold thing that came after and i'll die on that. saxon's wheels of steel still sounds like it was cut in a garage, which is the whole point. the newer three are just here for the weight.

the ache under the gloss

pop that sounds like 2am... soft cell and the pet shop boys knew the trick, make it shimmer and make it sad at the same time.

Guitar records a math rock kid isn't supposed to like

half my listening is clean two-hand tapping and everyone acts like that started in some basement in 2008. it started with eddie. these are the six-string records i love that have nothing to do with the twinkly stuff. van halen goes first, obviously. anyway.

riffs that lock into a groove instead of a chorus

none of this is krautrock, not one record, but every one of these hits a point where the riff stops being a riff and just becomes a pulse. lonesome crow gets there because conny plank was literally in the room, the rest get there by accident. still worth the headphones.

the flip matters more than the bars

loose pile of stuff i keep for what's happening under the vocal. salaam remi's marvin gaye rework, earl running his own boards, that premier-school drum knock. if the beat's doing the work i'll forgive a lot up top.

old metal, still loud

covers, live cuts and a couple of deeper ones. sabbath at hammersmith is the reason this list exists. spinal tap sits at the bottom for a reason.

the ones i'd actually defend

half this pile is my dad's cd wallet, these are the keepers. modest mouse live is sloppy in the exact right way, nomeansno still the driest band that ever played fast. mount eerie's sauna is barely there and that's the appeal. anyway.

heavy in every decade

not loyal to one flavor of metal. old sabbath and saxon next to death metal and the metalcore i came up on. if it's heavy and it means it, it made the cut.

heavier stuff i keep coming back to

no real theme, just the metal that's stuck around on rotation longest this year.

kept for the RIFFS

not one scene, just the records where the guitars do all the talking. Meshuggah carries most of it, contradictions collapse still my favorite of theirs anyway.

not the marvin they play at brunch

everyone's got the best-of. these ones live under it. 'you're the man' over half his hits, idk.

the heavy shelf

not the forest-metal stuff for once. just the records i put on loud when i need something to actually move air in the room. sabbath and meshuggah up front, the rest earns its spot.

Passes the furniture test

None of this is drone and I'm not going to pretend it is. But these hold up when you actually sit and listen instead of letting them wallpaper the room. Plaid and the Divine Comedy record do most of the work.

it always comes down to the voice

doesn't matter what else is going on, if the voice does the thing i'm in. steve lacy and billy preston are the obvious soul ones but a rasp like dmx or chuck d lives in my chest the same way. this is the shelf sorted by whose voice i feel the most.

beats and the crates they came from

top half's the beats, bottom's the soul records that got chopped to make them. same shelf really. immaculate for late nights.

rock deep cuts that never crossed over

mix of decades and scenes, only thing tying it together is none of these got the bigger album their band deserved.

the soul crate

not the rap list. this is where the loops live before somebody chops them. stevie and al green do most of the lifting.

for when the twinkly stuff gets to be too much

i'm a basement-emo guy first, but some nights you just want a chorus you can hear from orbit and zero feelings attached. these do it. anyway.

the ones that just drive

not my usual cologne-and-dusseldorf stuff, but the through-line is the same: keep the engine running and don't stop for a chorus. scorpions' lonesome crow from before anyone knew what they'd become, and motorhead live is basically motorik with the amps blown. headphones.

the ones that live in my chest

warm end of the crate, soft when it wants to be. steve lacy's little vocal turn on the feeling still gets me every time. play it low with the crackle up.

the writing does the work

records where the message never costs the song. 'key to the kuffs' still the bar for saying a lot in very little.

Nothing here sounds like Neu!

The krautrock shelf is where I actually live, this is what gets played when I'm annoyed instead. Lonesome Crow is the only one with a real German pedigree, 1972, Schenker still a teenager, and the new mix finally gives the low end room to sit. The Kinks one is a padded best-of with nothing new on it and I put it on anyway. Headphones or it doesn't count.

long metal that earns it

not a scene thing, just the heavier stuff on here that actually builds to something instead of parking in one mood. opeth and btbam do the long-passage bit best. savatage's a soft spot i can't really justify. might reorder it on a different night, idk.

the soft ones

sophisti-pop, am-gold, a couple modern kids who get it. half of these stalled out or got buried by a label that didn't want to push a soft record, which is its own sad little genre. deacon blue's still my favorite of the lot. i like it soft, so.

swing still in the drums

jazz rap and the funk it lifted from. nothing chopped to death. doom first, obviously.

loud rooms, low ceilings

records that sound like a basement show, that specific volume where the ceiling sits right above your head. put these on in a bad apartment i don't live in anymore...

pop stars going electronic and vice versa

half of these are pop people chasing a club sound, half are club people who'd never admit they wrote a chorus. caribou's the hinge track for me, everything else got picked around it.

old soul first, then whoever did the homework

top half is what i actually pull out of crates, bottom half is who learned from it. not a history lesson, i just kept noticing the same drums turning up. anyway

loop crates

the stuff i actually dig through. kool & the gang 'music is the message' is a beat tape waiting to happen. the rest earns its spot.

not '94 but they get a pass

soul at the root, a couple rap cuts that actually swing, one frusciante detour. none of it boom bap, none of it trying to be. anyway.

Dusty drums, warm low end

Grabbed these for one reason: the drums breathe and the samples are left dusty instead of squashed flat. Billy Preston's Apple-era soul up top, then the Earl stuff Alchemist and his own beats keep pulling out of old records, on down to flips that still knock. Preston is the one I keep coming back to.

Loud stuff that repeats until it turns motorik

I got here from Neu! and Can, so what I want out of a rock record is a groove that locks in and then refuses to develop. These all do it, a couple of them by accident. Headphones or it doesn't count. No hits packages in here, I'm not putting a repress on a list.

where the warm drums come from

started at the motown end and worked forward. the low end on all of these sits in the same place whether it's tammi terrell or fat jon chopping something up decades later. nothing over-compressed made the cut.

worked backwards from samples and ended up here

half of these i only got to because something i already loved lifted a bar off them. the marvin is still the best of it, nobody sits a bassline that far forward anymore. anyway.

When the machine drives the pop song

Not a rivethead record in the bunch, but each one hands the groove to a sequencer or a drum box instead of a session kit. Pulled the ones where the pattern is doing the actual work. Underworld first since it's the only one built that way top to bottom.

july rotation

no theme here, just what stayed on. the marvin and the war record are morning music for me, the rylo is the one i've argued about the most.

synths doing the heavy lifting

none of this is coldwave. just the pop where the synth is the song and not the garnish. boy meets girl, reel life, 1988, is the one that holds up. the rest fills the racks.

loops first, rappers second

roc and the doom instrumentals up top because that's the whole point, the flip carries it. the soul stuff underneath is where half these breaks got lifted from anyway. left the trap records off, wrong crate.

machine voice, big snare

believe is the whole reason any of this exists, cher's producer cranked the auto-tune retune to zero as an effect in 98 and then told sound on sound it was a digitech talker pedal to throw everyone off. xerrox is the far end of the same idea, artifact as the actual texture, no voice at all. rest of it is here on drum design alone, t'pau's snare is the size of a car park. anyway.

One sitting, headphones on

Went back through my own ratings and kept only the things that work as a whole record, which meant leaving every hits package and remaster out of it. Hammersmith is the one live album I'll allow, because that one is an actual document and not a repackage. Start to finish or don't bother.

when the low end still breathes

Pulled these for the drum warmth more than anything. The Earl run leans on that dusty MIKE-adjacent flip, and the Billy Preston and Supremes sides are where a lot of that warmth got lifted from in the first place. Nothing here scrubbed clean.

loud rock, headphones only

the heavy rotation. left the greatest-hits and live cash-grabs off, you know the ones they charge full price for. scorpions' debut sits up top as the weird kosmische-adjacent outlier and i love it there. no sleep 'til hammersmith actually earns the live tag, most don't.

the bass is the lead instrument on all five of these

put these through something with an actual sub before you argue with me. tower of power is the reason the list exists, that line does what a bassline is supposed to do and never asks for credit. the suicideboys one is the odd one out, all 808 and no fingers, but it moves the same air. ordered by how much falls apart if you take the low end away.

where the bass is actually doing something

prog and tech picked for the low end you can track, not for mood. the morningrise remaster is the obvious one. dream theater demos are rough but the fills already rip! ranked by whether the bassline earns its own line.

Every one of these is somebody else's city

I spend most of my listening inside about four square miles of Memphis so this is the other pile, filed by where it came from. Slim Thug is closest to home, that Houston low end and the tape murk I grew up on are cousins whether anybody admits it or not, Vezzo is Detroit and the beats carry the same nobody-is-coming-to-help feeling, Chingy and Banks are just records I have never once gotten tired of. Fat Jon is last on purpose, dude is from Cincinnati and somehow makes it sound like nowhere at all.

Low end first, everything else after

Sequenced by how the drums sit rather than by year, which is how a 1970 Apple record ends up next to an Earl loop. If the kick has room around it I'll forgive almost anything else. Nothing on here got squashed into a brick at the mastering stage.

loud, for when low doesn't cut it

not my usual end of things at all. three from this summer i keep going back to anyway. deep purple first, that riff is doing something the other two aren't quite

Grammy Best Rap Album winners

Every Grammy Best Rap Album winner since the category began in 1996.

Mercury Prize winners

Every Mercury Prize winner since the prize began in 1992. The UK and Ireland's album of the year, chosen by an independent panel.

Arrangement doing the work

Four rock records well outside my usual area, kept for structural reasons only; none of them are avant-garde and none of them claim to be. The Hooters lead because the melodica and the mandolin carry lines a guitar would have taken in any other band working in 1987; that is a compositional decision, not a gimmick. Private Audition is the Heart album everyone files as the failure, and it is also the one where the arrangements are least padded. Metanoia is overwrought and I am counting it anyway; the writing under the theatre is tighter than the presentation lets on. The Districts are the newest thing here and the weakest of the four, though the song forms are clean.

made by machines, some of them admit it

matmos built ultimate care ii out of one washing machine and that's the honest end of this. the alva noto and the czukay are the same impulse with better manners. encore is four sides of sequencer from 1977 and still the best argument for any of it. the bottom half is pop that's just as programmed, it just never says so out loud. the samantha fox is here because the drum machine is the actual star of that record and nobody wants to admit that either.

when i cant take another 40 minutes of one chord

songs. verses. a chorus, even. nick cave and madrugada are the only two that hold up next to the drone stuff, everything under them is just good. clutch is on here for the riffs and not one word of it. no real order past the top three anyway.

where the drums came from

soul and funk i keep going back to for the drums more than the singing. the james brown one is the obvious cheat, half of everything is already in there. the roberta flack is the one nobody brings up and it's got the best low end of the lot. anyway.

Nothing to do with body music

Pop and ambient sides I keep in rotation even though they have no business sitting next to the Front 242 records. Fernando is a 1976 Polar single and still the best-arranged thing here, the vocal doing work the machine usually does. GAS at the bottom because it is the only one that never asks for a chorus.

Somebody actually played the bass

Board credits over bars, like always. Tower of Power twice because Rocco is doing something down there a sampler will not hand back. Quincy for the arrangement, not the name. Not grading anybody's lyrics on this one, never have.

weightless, but with a beat

pop records that do to me what slowdive does, only faster. underworld first, it asks the least of you...