All posts tagged: Albums

It bombed in the charts, critics hated it – so how did the Ramones make one of the best debut albums ever?

It bombed in the charts, critics hated it – so how did the Ramones make one of the best debut albums ever?

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the inside track from Roisin O’Connor with our free weekly music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This Danny Fields knew he wanted to manage the Ramones from the moment he laid eyes on them. It was early 1975, and he was an influential music journalist who’d helped the Stooges and the MC5 get record deals. The Ramones, hoping for the same, pestered him incessantly to see them play. “I had the people at the magazine tell them I was in the loo,” remembers Fields, now 86. “I was being hounded!” Eventually he gave in and made his way down to CBGBs in New York’s East Village. He walked in to the grimy club to see four delinquents in leather jackets tearing through a song called “I Don’t Wanna Go Down To The Basement”. He was in love. “It took my breath away,” he whispers reverentially. “‘They’re perfect, they’re perfect’… that’s all that went through my head.” The Ramones were the …

The Best Red Hot Chili Peppers Albums, Definitively Ranked

The Best Red Hot Chili Peppers Albums, Definitively Ranked

Published by Jenni Sidey

At first, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were not good. Neither of their first two albums make it into this top 10, and with good reason—for their first half-decade, the band were mostly focused on producing a fundamentally unpalatable brand of funk that was probably quite fun to play but absolutely no good at all to listen to. Their third album (featured here in the no. 10 spot) was better, mostly just by virtue of being a watered-down version of the first two. But on fourth album Mother’s Milk, guitarist John Frusciante got involved, and everything began to change. Not immediately—they had to work out their new sound, and there were some missteps and ill-advised circling-backs along the way—but in retrospect, they can now claim to have originated and developed a sound that was completely original and also, eventually, actually really good to listen to. Those funk roots were still there, but they were tempered by a melodic sympathy and a gentleness that either evaded or did not interest them on earlier records. Their lyrics, …

Solo Beatles Albums, Definitively Ranked

Solo Beatles Albums, Definitively Ranked

Published by Jenni Sidey

On the 10th of April 1970, Paul McCartney announced what had, by then, been falsely reported so many times as to seem almost impossible—The Beatles, the biggest band to ever do it, were finished. Within a week, McCartney had released his first solo record. Before the year was out, all three of his former bandmates had done the same. And as of today, the solo Beatles have collectively produced around 85 albums, depending how you count. That’s a lot to wade through for anyone keen on venturing beyond the band’s tight 12-studio-album discography. But wade we must, and there is so much to learn in our wading. These records are charged with parting barbs and so variously excellent and awful and bewildering. They contain not just a huge quantity of interesting and enjoyable music, but a path toward an understanding of what it was that made the band work as it did. Who was good at what? Who needed what from whom, whose instincts were balanced by whose, and what kinds of adventures might result …

The 35 greatest debut albums of all time, from Arctic Monkeys to Ramones

The 35 greatest debut albums of all time, from Arctic Monkeys to Ramones

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the inside track from Roisin O’Connor with our free weekly music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This People often talk about second album syndrome, and the pressures that follow a great first record. Often it can overshadow conversation around the debut itself: “Brilliant album… shame about the second one.” But while it’s true that many an artist has struggled to meet expectations after a triumphant beginning, it shouldn’t take away from the achievements made on those first records. They serve as statements of intent and have the power to change or reshape the industry, inspire fellow musicians, and drive essential conversation about our understanding of music. Whether it’s the rock on The Strokes’ much-hyped 2001 album Is This It or the rap prowess of Notorious BIG on Ready to Die, introducing a genre to the rest of the world via Daft Punk’s Homework or creating a new one entirely with Black Sabbath – debut albums can take a previously unknown …

The Best Winter Albums For Beating (Or Embracing) the Cold

The Best Winter Albums For Beating (Or Embracing) the Cold

Published by Jenni Sidey

This is a chilly album. Though it contains a lot of Blake’s voice, it has less of the singer-songwriterly warmth of his later records, and instead leans more towards the electronic experimentation of his early EPs. It’s all the better for it: the vocal manipulation, looping and layering on “The Wilhelm Scream,” “I Never Learnt to Share” and many other tracks is quietly compelling; the titanic sub-bass under the vocals and piano of “Limit to Your Love” is a revelation. It’s still Blake’s finest piece of work. Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak (2008) Every year that goes by emphasises how 808s & Heartbreak, a divisive album upon release, was a landmark in 21st-century rap and popular music in general. Traumatized by the death of his mother and a split with his then-fiancé, Kanye West didn’t want to rap, so he booted up Autotune and made some melodic electro-pop. Modern Autotuned sad-boy rap wouldn’t exist without 808s & Heartbreak, but even putting that impact aside it’s compelling, in a distinctly anguished, heart-stricken way. One of the …

19 Best Albums From 2025 To Listen To Before The End Of The Year

19 Best Albums From 2025 To Listen To Before The End Of The Year

Published by Sam Flores

As the New Year celebrations approach, many of us will be pausing for some reflection in the next few days. For some, this period is all about looking back over what’s brought us joy in the last year, while for others, it’s more of an opportunity to catch up on the big moments we didn’t get the chance to fully embrace at the time. One thing we always like to do in the lull between Christmas and New Year is check out some of the big musical releases from the last 12 months that we missed out on first time around, to give them due attention before the year is out. So, if you’ve suddenly found yourself with an hour or two to spare in the post-Christmas lull, why not check out some of these essential albums from 2025 now you finally have the opportunity…? Bad Bunny – Debí Tirar Más Fotos Embarrassingly for us Brits, Bad Bunny has never quite cut through when it comes to UK listeners (Debí Tirar Más Fotos charted at …

The 50 best albums of 2025 | Culture

The 50 best albums of 2025 | Culture

Published by Sam Flores

50-41 50 Nourished by Time – The Passionate Ones Marcus Elliot Brown, AKA one-man project Nourished By Time, has a classic R&B singing voice in the style of Freddie Jackson or Luther Vandross: warm, earnest and with every word enunciated as if to express his keenness of feeling. But his music is quite different: a slippery layer cake of samples, multitudinous keys and lo-fi pop production, with Brown singing of a world where “the ebb and flow isn’t ebbing right”, be it in love or civic life. There is still room for an instant-classic R&B ballad though, in Tossed Away. Ben Beaumont-Thomas 49 Rochelle Jordan – Through the Wall Everything is just so on the British Canadian producer’s sixth album: expensively plush deep house suggesting club lights low, gleaming mirrors, potent looks igniting across the dancefloor. As much as the cold beat and ballroom flow of Ladida or the slapping “body, body, body” incantations of On 2 Something suggest a steadfast commitment to abandon, Jordan maintains impeccable poise and control throughout, whether in diva mode …

De Los ranks 10 best albums by Latino artists in 2025

De Los ranks 10 best albums by Latino artists in 2025

Published by Sam Flores

Throughout 2025, De Los has championed the rise of the Latino artists from their respective musical silos and into the broader global pop stratosphere. The 2026 Super Bowl halftime show headliner Bad Bunny and Inland Empire corrido kings Fuerza Regida scaled new commercial and cultural heights this year, as emerging acts like Silvana Estrada, Ela Minus and Netón Vega took exciting new detours in their sounds. De Los recently did a team huddle to determine our personal best releases of 2025 — this is no garden variety Latin genre list, but a highlight reel of our favorite works by artists from Latin America and the diaspora. 10. Cazzu, “Latinaje”Reeling from a romantic disappointment of mythological proportions and the lackluster reception of her previous album, Argentine trap queen Cazzu fired back with a maximalist travelogue that draws from salsa and cumbia, Argentine folk and electro-pop. Cazzu hails from the province of Jujuy, miles away from the musical snobbery that plagues much of Buenos Aires, and her genuine investment in a pan-Latino idiom is contagious. A sumptuous …