1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

There is much for music lovers to be happy about once they get a hold of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Arranged by decade (1950s to present day), the hefty book is full of compulsively readable reviews written by various music critics, all more than willing to back up exactly why they consider these selections essential to your musical life.

Kicking off with Frank Sinatra’s heartbreaking In The Wee Small Hours, 1001 Albums tells us that Sinatra was almost a has-been when he recorded it. But by expressing quiet pain at his break-up with Ava Gardner, he brought something intriguing and unforgettable to a collection of songs already familiar to many and previously covered, but somehow made fresh and scintillating and show more beautiful.

As I devoured the pages, certain albums seemed to jump out at me, both ones I knew well and ones "new" to me. Purple Rain, the soundtrack to Prince’s ground-breaking film, remains fresh in my mind because I never stopped liking it. But Actually, by the Pet Shop Boys, stuck for some reason and I remembered 1987 and how much I used to like "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" (a hit for them, with the help of music legend Dusty Springfield). I went to our shelves, checked out the album and discovered that The Pet Shop Boys sound as fresh as ever.

For me, as the chapters ascended in order from the 80s to present day, I felt like I was taking a walk through all of the musical moments of my life and yet making new discoveries. If you live music like I do, can’t get enough of your favorites, and are constantly in search of more great listens, you definitely want to grab a copy of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. show less

Heavily skewed towards the avant-garde, the edgy, the profane, the Parental Advisory sticker-able. It's a wonder that sonic comfort food like Boston's debut album made the list.

Note, review applies to this 2005 Australian edition, which is combined with all other country editions.
Find at http://shop.abc.net.au or any good Australian bookstore.

‘1001 Albums’ is described as the 'ultimate insider's guide to all those albums you have to hear before it is too late'. Typical gutsy hyperbole, but all true. It's a book to browse and enjoy reading because it's more than a list of subjectively selected albums.

Over 90 (mainly US & UK) industry and magazine have given readable and entertaining insight into what made each album significant then and now, production & recording details, as well as full track listing and images of the album cover.
Riches indeed!
Triple J's Richard Kingsmill does a foreword for this show more Australian-published edition but it otherwise appears to be a straight reprint of the UK edition. On that note, although I've found many old favourites in here as well as new ones…. I wish we'd had more New Zealand and Australian local talent represented in this ABC edition.

Music-lovers in both countries will agree we’ve had some significant albums produced in THIS hemisphere as well. As much as I love the Finn brothers....yes Crowded House deserve to be found here, but NZ representation is otherwise thin. And while Australian rockers AC/DC appear to have made the top 1,001… there’s little acknowledgement otherwise that Australia has produced a huge depth of talent in the last 20 years as well.

Apart from that parochial gripe, it’s a fantastic book to have and enjoy. At 960 pages… make sure your bookshelf is sturdy. show less

This is a nice little encyclopedia to have. I've been getting into a lot of older music recently, and it's awesome to go to back to this book to read about Sly & The Family Stone or Leonard Cohen or whoever else in this book (of course there's new music all the way up till 2005 here as well). Obviously whenever lists are compiled, there are questionable inclusions and omissions, but you're likely to find a lot of your favourite albums in here, and be opened up to a lot of new music.

This is a great browsing book and unlike "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" i have heard of many of these. Subjective, as any book of this type must be, it is still a very worthwhile book to own--and definitely a conversation starter.

Ordered chronologically, this book contains albums that are considered to be great by a series of critics. Starting with Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, the book continues on through the rest of the 1950s and on into the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Since it has a huge amount of material to cover, I imagine the list had to be pared down quite a bit.

All the entries have the name of the artist, the name of the particular album in question, and some basic stats about the album; the running time of the album, the producer, the art director, and so on. Following that is a small biographical blurb on some select tracks and how it was received at the time of release. Several don't list what the Album Cover looks like, so that show more is not something you will always get.

Reading through this is like peeking into the history of 20th century music, and can be considered a crash course in modern music. Or at least I suppose it could(I mean, I'm no critic, but I do have opinions). I mostly read this for ideas on stuff to listen to, and reaped some unexpected benefits from finding some weird band names. The 1960s had a few, but the one that stuck out the most was Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. Butthole Surfers was another weird one, but I think I had heard of them before. show less

Mostly useful and interesting for the list itself - the accompanying description of each of the albums is sometimes the worst type of rock-crit.