Top 250 American Albums

Classic rock came along at the right time. The album era was just getting underway.

Typically defined as the years between the mid-’60s and the turn of the century, this period saw long-players become the dominant form of sharing music. Three formats led the way, first vinyl records, then cassette tapes and finally compact discs.

Rock was maturing in parallel, with American artists like the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder and Guns N’ Roses setting new standards in long-form recording – both culturally and commercially.

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Hit singles might still have been released from these albums, but the goal was to put together a suite of tracks that stood together as an artistic statement. Individual songs became part of a larger whole.

Technology pulled the album era apart, just as it had once made the concept possible. The rise of MTV, then Mp3s and then streaming eventually returned mainstream music to its roots as a singles culture. But not before Americans released some of the most artistically ambitious (and top-selling) LPs in rock history.

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Acts like Alice Cooper, Green Day, Frank Zappa and Styx stitched songs together in a single narrative to form concept albums. Live recordings by the likes of Cheap Trick, Journey, Talking Heads and the Allman Brothers Band were as beloved as any studio creations.

They kept going. The most ambitious U.S. artists moved from single-disc releases to sweeping double-album statements, including Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Jimi Hendrix and Husker Du. Meanwhile, Chicago, the Byrds and Santana bent musical styles. Others created entirely new ones.

Which LPs defined the era? The UCR staff looked back over more than six decades of music then voted for the best of the best. Here’s our countdown of the Top 250 American Albums:

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