Best Albums of 1991 (Part 2)

So I’ll preface this by saying I mostly knew what I was getting into when writing a series about listening to a list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, as voted by Rolling Stone. That list was bound to be flawed - every list of “bests” must be. Not to mention the fact that RS itself is questionable when it comes to rating anything except mega pop stars these days, and those seem to get nothing but glowing reviews from what I can tell. I went into it thinking “screw it, might as well start somewhere”, and also figuring I’d learn about how different media outlets like RS rank music.

In any list like this, great albums get left off, and others get included for reasons we disagree with. My personal issue with RS’s list, for example, is the presence of 9 Dylan albums. I totally appreciate the impact he had on music, don’t get me wrong, and maybe each of these albums had a distinct legacy that doesn’t overlap whatsoever with the others - but on the other hand, after the first 5 albums on the list, don’t you think the point is made? Let’s include someone else, like maybe a genre other than singer-songwriter, alt-rock, or Britpop (the list is literally stuffed with these. My unofficial count is approximately 600 out of the 500 come from these genres. I won’t be verifying my numbers at this time).

On the other hand, the point of a list like this isn’t to create a new definition of the popular music canon - or at least it shouldn’t be. The point should be to share things we take joy in, and to create discussion that leads to even more learning and knowledge of great music. It’s the list after the list that holds the real value - all the ones that should have been included, and all of the discussion around them. So in that spirit, I’m going to do a followup post after my weekly greatest albums list post where I go through the great recommendations from the comments on my standard posts. (That’s a political way of saying I’m going to shamelessly steal…. Uh, I mean, borrow album ideas from those wiser than myself).

So here are my favorite albums that were left off of my 1991 post from last week. I could probably do like 5 issues about 1991, but there are more years to explore. Thanks to everyone who sent recommendations!