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My Top 150 Albums – The Last.Fm List

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In 2008, I joined last.fm, a music website (and app) that keeps track of the music I listen to on my computer and my smartphone (excluding Youtube videos), and also makes recommendations based on my listening habits.  Below are the top 150 albums I’ve listened to between 2008 and today (2/6/2022), based on last.fm‘s calculations.  I’ve listed the albums in order of frequency and have included a genre description (usually borrowed from Wikipedia).

After classical music (26 out of 150 albums), the genre I listen to the most is “indie rock” (20 albums). This term originated as a way to identify artists whose music was released by independent record labels, although it has now expanded to describe a brand of alternative rock music.  I’m not sure how alternative rock and indie rock differ.  If someone wants to explain in the comments, that would be great.  (For example, does an “indie rock” band stop being “indie rock” if it is signed to a major record label, even if the style of music they play remains basically the same?)

I also listen to music that is categorized as “indie pop” (eight albums) and “indie folk” (six albums) (including some overlap with “indie rock”).  Once again, I’m not sure I understand how the nature of the company distributing the music tells us anything about the music itself, other than to say that it differs (but how?) from mainstream rock, pop, and folk music.  Other big categories are jazz (18 albums), alternative rock (15 albums), blues (13 albums), and rhythm & blues (R&B) (13 albums).  The artists with the most albums on  the list are The New Pornographers and Aimee Mann, with five albums each.

Some caveats:
(1) These are not necessarily my favorite albums.  They are the albums I’ve listened to the most. Many of my favorite artists are not represented on this list.
(2) This is all music that I personally own – I don’t use Spotify, Pandora or other streaming services.
(3) I rarely listen to an entire album at once, so these ratings mean that I have listened to tracks from the album, not necessarily the entire album.
(4) I often listen to my music in “shuffle” mode. This means that albums with more tracks are more likely to be played, which biases the list in favor of the albums with the most tracks.  This also means that there is a bias in favor of albums with shorter tracks and against albums with longer ones.
(5) This list does not take into account CDs that I have played on my CD players at home and in my car.

  1. Antisocialites (2017) – Alvvays [indie pop]
  2. Challengers (2007) – The New Pornographers [indie rock]
  3. Memorial Collection (rec. 1955-1959) – Buddy Holly [rock & roll]
  4. Shostakovich: The String Quartets (2000) – Emerson String Quartet [classical]
  5. Debussy: Images, Etudes (2000) – Jean-Yves Thibaudet [classical]
  6. Complete Decca Recordings (rec. 1937-1939) – Count Basie [jazz]
  7. Bach: St. Matthew Passion (1962) – Philharmonia Orchestra & Chorus/Otto Klemperer [classical]
  8. Together (2010) – The New Pornographers [indie rock]
  9. The Man and His Music (rec. 1956-1964) – Sam Cooke [soul/R&B]
  10. Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards (2006) – Tom Waits [experimental/rock/jazz/blues]
  11. Art Angels (2015) – Grimes [dream pop/electronic]
  12. Chopin: 24 Preludes, Piano Sonata #2 (2000) – Evgeny Kissin [classical]
  13. Whiteout Conditions (2017) – The New Pornographers [indie rock]
  14. The Singles (rec. 1969-1993) – David Bowie [art rock/pop]
  15. Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (2014) – Courtney Barnett [indie rock]
  16. Lost in Space (2002) – Aimee Mann [pop/rock]
  17. The Guitar Song (2009) – Jamey Johnson [country]
  18. Couperin: Les Nations (1965) – Quadro Amsterdam [classical]
  19. Alvvays (2013) – Alvvays [indie pop]
  20. No Direction Home: Bootleg Series Volume 7 (rec. 1959-1966) – Bob Dylan [folk/folk rock]
  21. New Moon (2007) – Elliott Smith [indie folk/lo-fi]
  22. Ligeti: Works for Piano (1997) – Pierre-Laurent Aimard [classical]
  23. The Essential Sonny Boy Williamson (rec. 1954-1964) – Sonny Boy Williamson [blues]
  24. Twin Cinema (2005) – The New Pornographers [indie rock]
  25. Bach: Mass in B minor (1977) – Bach-Collegium Stuttgart/Helmuth Rilling [classical]
  26. Gluck: Orphée et Eurydice (French version by Hector Berlioz) (1996) – San Francisco Opera/Donald Runnicles [classical]
  27. The Suburbs (2010) – Arcade Fire [indie rock]
  28. The Early Years (rec. 1940-1947) – Bill Monroe [country/bluegrass]
  29. Britten: Peter Grimes (1978) – Royal Opera House Covent Garden/Colin Davis [classical]
  30. The Blanton-Webster Band (rec. 1942-1944) – Duke Ellington [jazz]
  31. Visions (2012) – Grimes [dream pop/electronic]
  32. West Side Story (1957) – Original Broadway Cast [classical/show tunes]
  33. The Great Twenty-Eight (rec. 1955-1964) – Chuck Berry [rock & roll]
  34. Cross Country Tour (rec. 1958-1961) – Ahmad Jamal Trio [jazz]
  35. Imperial Bedroom (1982) – Elvis Costello & the Attractions [new wave/power pop]
  36. It’s Blitz! (2009) – Yeah Yeah Yeahs [synth-punk/alternative pop]
  37. The Ultimate Collection (rec. 1959-1970) – Smokey Robinson & The Miracles [soul/R&B]
  38. Mozart: The Ten Celebrated String Quartets (1997) – The Franz Schubert Quartet [classical]
  39. Rameau: Castor et Pollux (1994) – English Bach Festival Baroque Orchestra/Charles Farncombe [classical]
  40. Piano Solos: Turn On The Heat (rec. 1927-1941) – Fats Waller [jazz]
  41. The Complete Aladdin Sessions (rec. 1942-1948) – Lester Young [jazz]
  42. Bachelor No. 2 (1999) – Aimee Mann [pop/rock]
  43. 69 Love Songs (1999) – The Magnetic Fields [indie pop/chamber pop]
  44. Burn Your Fire for No Witness (2014) – Angel Olsen [indie rock/indie folk]
  45. Music of the Crusades (1971) – Early Music Consort of London/David Munrow [classical]
  46. Stravinsky: The Rake’s Progress (1996) – Chorus and Orchestra de l’Opera Lyon/Kent Nagano [classical]
  47. Poet of the Blues (rec. 1950-1954) – Percy Mayfield [blues]
  48. Tommy (1969) – The Who [hard rock]
  49. Afrocubism (2010) – Afrocubism [world/Latin/mande]
  50. The ArchAndroid (2010) – Janelle Monáe [progressive soul/alternative R&B]
  51. Whatever (1993) – Aimee Mann [pop/rock]
  52. Have a Little Faith (1993) – Bill Frisell [jazz]
  53. The Genius of the Electric Guitar (rec. 1939-1941) – Charlie Christian [jazz]
  54. The Hazards of Love (2009) – The Decemberists [folk rock/progressive rock]
  55. Tippett: A Child of Our Time (1991) – City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra & Chorus/ Michael Tippett [classical]
  56. The Band (1969) – The Band [roots rock/Americana]
  57. I’m With Stupid (1995) – Aimee Mann [pop/rock]
  58. Girls Girls Girls (rec. 1977-1986) – Elvis Costello [new wave/power pop]
  59. Beautiful Creature (1999) – Juliana Hatfield [alternative rock]
  60. Speakerboxx/The Love Below (2004) – OutKast [hip hop]
  61. Singles Collection: The London Years (rec. 1963-1970) – The Rolling Stones [rock/blues/pop]
  62. Blind Lemon Jefferson (rec. 1925-1929) – Blind Lemon Jefferson [blues]
  63. Egyptology (1997) – World Party [alternative rock/indie pop]
  64. Schumann: Kreisleriana, Carnaval (1995) – Mistsuko Uchida [classical]
  65. MASSEDUCTION (2017) – St. Vincent [art rock]
  66. Hide Away: The Best of Freddie King (rec. 1956-1970) – Freddie King [blues]
  67. Bolcom: Songs of Innocence and Experience (2004) – University of Michigan School of Music Symphony Orchestra/ Leonard Slatkin [classical]
  68. Mucho Macho Machito and His Afro-Cuban Salseros (1948-1949) – Machito & His Afro-Cubans [jazz/Latin]
  69. Stockhausen: Stimmung (1984) – Singcircle/Gregory Rose [classical]
  70. The Very Best of (rec. 1967-1969) – Aretha Franklin [soul/R&B]
  71. Trout Mask Replica (1969) – Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band [avant-garde/experimental rock]
  72. Forever Changes (1967) – Love [psychedelic rock]
  73. MAYA (2010) – M.I.A. [hip hop]
  74. Volume One (2008) – She & Him [indie pop/alternative country]
  75. Embryonic (2009) – The Flaming Lips [neo-psychedelia/alternative rock]
  76. The Soft Bulletin (1999) – The Flaming Lips [neo-psychedelia/alternative rock]
  77. The Number One Hits (rec. 1956-1969) – Elvis Presley [rock & roll]
  78. Schubert: Die Winterreise (1983) Haken Hagegard & Thomas Schuback [classical]
  79. That Lonesome Song (2008) – Jamey Johnson [country]
  80. The Classic Cobra Recordings (rec. 1956-1958) – Otis Rush [blues]
  81. Cadence Classics: Their 20 Greatest Hits (rec. 1957-1960) – The Everly Brothers [country rock]
  82. LIFTED or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002) – Bright Eyes [indie rock/indie folk]
  83. Beautiful Garbage (2001) – Garbage [alternative rock/trip hop]
  84. Who Is Jill Scott? (Words and Sounds Vol. 1) (2000) – Jill Scott [neo-soul/R&B]
  85. Uh Huh Her (2004) – PJ Harvey [alternative rock/art rock]
  86. Gold (2001) – Ryan Adams [alternative country/indie rock]
  87. Greatest Hits (rec. 1962-1967) – The Righteous Brothers [pop/soul]
  88. Closer (1980) – Joy Division [post-punk/gothic rock]
  89. Hot Fives & Sevens, Vol. 4 (Louis Armstrong & Earl Hines) (rec. 1928-1929) – Louis Armstrong [jazz]
  90. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (2007) – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds [alternative rock]
  91. I and Love and You (2009) – The Avett Brothers [indie folk]
  92. Complete Chess Recordings (rec. 1950-1959) – Jimmy Rogers [blues]
  93. Riley: Salome Dances for Peace (1989) – Kronos Quartet [classical]
  94. Middle Cyclone (2008) – Neko Case [indie rock/alternative country]
  95. Schoenberg: Gürrelieder (2001) – Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Simon Rattle [classical]
  96. Alice (2002) – Tom Waits [experimental/rock/jazz/blues]
  97. Body and Soul (rec. 1939-1956) – Coleman Hawkins [jazz]
  98. Blonde on Blonde (1966) – Bob Dylan [folk rock]
  99. SMiLE (2004) – Brian Wilson [orchestral pop]
  100. 25th Anniversary (rec. 1939-1964) – Judy Garland [pop standards/show tunes]
  101. No Boundaries (1996) – Natalie MacMaster [world/Celtic]
  102. Flood (1990) – They Might Be Giants [alternative rock/power pop]
  103. Freetown Sound (2016) – Blood Orange [alternative R&B/experimental jazz]
  104. Offenbach: Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1950) – Choeur et Orchestre du Theatre National de l’Opera-Comique/Andre Cluytens [classical]
  105. Bartók: Six String Quartets (1988) – Emerson String Quartet [classical]
  106. In Exile Deo (2004) – Juliana Hatfield [alternative rock]
  107. The College Dropout (2004) – Kanye West [hip hop]
  108. Cripple Crow (2005) – Devendra Banhart [psychedelic folk]
  109. Galore: The Singles (rec. 1987-1997) – The Cure [gothic rock/post-punk]
  110. Electric Version (2003) – The New Pornographers [indie rock]
  111. Malibu (2016) – Anderson .Paak [soul/R&B/hip hop]
  112. Pure Comedy (2017) – Father John Misty [indie rock/indie folk]
  113. This World Is Not My Home (rec. 1985-1987) – Lone Justice [cowpunk/country rock]
  114. Próxima Estación: Esperanza (2001) – Manu Chao [worldbeat/Latin alternative]
  115. Toxicity (2001) – System of a Down [alternative metal]
  116. 16 Greatest Hits (rec. 1965-1968) – The Mamas & the Papas [folk rock]
  117. Before Today (2010) – Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti [lo-fi/hypnagogic pop]
  118. Midnite Vultures (1999) – Beck [funk rock/R&B]
  119. The Complete Savoy & Dial Master Takes (rec. 1945-1948) – Charlie Parker [jazz]
  120. A Town Called Addis (2008) – Dub Colossus [world/dub/reggae]
  121. Dusty In Memphis (1968) – Dusty Springfield [pop/soul/R&B]
  122. New Amerykah, Pt. 1 (4th World War) (2008) – Erykah Badu [neo-soul/funk/R&B]
  123. Adams: The Death of Klinghoffer (1992) – Lyon National Opera Orchestra & London Opera Chorus/Kent Nagano [classical]
  124. Segundo (2000) – Juana Molina [world/folktronica]
  125. Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out (2005) – Petra Haden [indie rock]
  126. Kid A (2000) – Radiohead [experimental rock/electronica]
  127. Verve Jazz Masters 34 (rec. 1944-1962) – Coleman Hawkins [jazz]
  128. With the Beatles (1963) – The Beatles [pop/R&B/rock & roll]
  129. Beethoven: The Late String Quartets (1992) – Tokyo String Quartet [classical]
  130. Summer Sun (2003) – Yo La Tengo [indie rock/dream pop]
  131. Mental Illness (2017) – Aimee Mann [pop/rock]
  132. Armchair Apocrypha (2007) – Andrew Bird [indie rock]
  133. For Emma, Forever Ago (2007) – Bon Iver [indie folk/indie pop/indie rock]
  134. Stravinsky: The Great Ballets (1963, 1973) – London Philharmonic Orchestra/Bernard Haitink [classical]
  135. Let England Shake (2011) – PJ Harvey [folk rock]
  136. Anthology (rec. 1960-1972) – Ray Charles [soul/R&B]
  137. Dear Science (2008) – TV on the Radio [art rock/indie rock]
  138. The Buddy Holly Collection (rec. 1954-1959) – Buddy Holly [rock & roll]
  139. Le Quintette du Hot Club de France (rec. 1934-1940) – Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grappelli [jazz]
  140. The Fat Man – 25 Classic Performances (rec. 1949-1961) – Fats Domino [rock & roll/R&B]
  141. Good News For People Who Love Bad News (2004) – Modest Mouse [indie rock]
  142. Third (2008) – Portishead [trip hop/alternative rock]
  143. White Blood Cells (2001) – The White Stripes [garage rock/alternative rock]
  144. Goodbye Jumbo (1990) – World Party [alternative rock/indie pop]
  145. King of the Blues Guitar (rec. 1966-1969) – Albert King [blues]
  146. The Information (2006) – Beck [alternative rock]
  147. The Definitive Blind Willie McTell (rec. 1929-1933) – Blind Willie McTell [blues]
  148. My Maudlin Career (2009) – Camera Obscura [indie pop]
  149. The Crane Wife (2006) – The Decemberists [indie rock/progressive folk]
  150. Sleep Well Beast (2017) – The National [indie rock/art rock]

Screen Test: The Updated Movie Lists

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I added 10 more “best movies of all time” lists to the meta-list, bringing the total number of original source lists to over 36 (I lost exact count along the way!). The new lists (all from 2020 and 2021) were identified by Enrique, a Make Lists, Not War reader – thank you Enrique for your contribution to the website!

Here are the links to the updated movie lists:
Best Films of All Time – Ranked
Best Films of All Time – Chronological
Best Films of All Time – By Director

The new lists rearranged the meta-list considerably and added two dozen new movies, many of them recent releases.  I was surprised (and a bit disheartened) to see that Pulp Fiction is now tied for first place with Citizen Kane.  Don’t get me wrong, I think Pulp Fiction is an excellent movie, but I don’t quite see it as the best movie ever.  But that’s the fun of lists – you may not agree with the listers, but you can’t deny that Pulp Fiction was on 33 “best films of all time” lists.

Below are the 24 new movies I added to the meta-list (which contains films that are on at least four of the original source lists) as a result of the update. They include five women and four Black Americans; the world of movie directing is finally becoming diverse. There are also six winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture.

  1. The Gunfighter (US, 1950) Dir: Henry King (on 4 lists)
  2. The Passenger (France/Italy/US/Spain, 1975) Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni (on 4 lists)
  3. Gandhi (UK/India, 1982) Dir: Richard Attenborough (on 4 lists)
  4. Edward Scissorhands (US, 1990) Dir: Tim Burton (on 4 lists)
  5. Daughters of the Dust (US, 1991) Dir: Julie Dash (on 4 lists)
  6. Jurassic Park (US 1993) Dir: Steven Spielberg (on 5 lists)
  7. Forrest Gump (US, 1994) Dir: Robert Zemeckis (on 5 lists)
  8. Clueless (US, 1995) Dir: Amy Heckerling (on 5 lists)
  9. Titanic (US, 1997) Dir: James Cameron (on 5 lists)
  10. Life is Beautiful (Italy, 1997) Dir: Roberto Benigni (on 4 lists)
  11. Good Will Hunting (US, 1997) Dir: Gus Van Sant (on 5 lists)
  12. The Hurt Locker (US, 2008) Dir: Kathryn Bigelow (on 5 lists)
  13. Avatar (US, 2009) Dir: James Cameron (on 5 lists)
  14. Amour (France/Austria/Germany, 2012) Dir: Michael Haneke (on 4 lists)
  15. Carol (US/UK, 2015) Dir: Todd Haynes (on 4 lists)
  16. La La Land (US, 2016) Dir: Damien Chazelle (on 5 lists)
  17. Moonlight (US, 2016) Dir: Barry Jenkins (on 8 lists)
  18. Call Me By Your Name (Italy/US/France/Brazil, 2017) Dir: Luca Guadagnino (on 4 lists)
  19. Lady Bird (US, 2017) Dir: Greta Gerwig (on 7 lists)
  20. Get Out (US, 2017) Dir: Jordan Peele (on 8 lists)
  21. Roma (Mexico/US, 2018) Dir: Alfonso Cuarón (on 4 lists)
  22. Black Panther (US, 2018) Dir: Ryan Coogler (on 4 lists)
  23. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (France, 2019) Dir: Céline Sciamma (on 4 lists)
  24. Parasite (South Korea, 2019) Dir: Bong Joon-ho (on 6 lists)

 

Classic Hits: The Updated Classical Music Lists

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I’ve added two more lists to the classical music meta-lists.  This has added more than a dozen new pieces of music and three new-to-the-list composers:

  • Henryk Wieniawski (Poland, 1835-1880)
  • Umberto Giordano (Italy, 1867-1948)
  • Henri Dutilleux (France, 1916-2013)

The links to the updated lists are here:
Best Classical Music – Ranked
Best Classical Music – Chronological
Best Classical Music – By Composer
Best Classical Music – By Type of Composition

The full meta-list contains 656 pieces of music (659 if you count Wagner’s Ring cycle as 4 instead of 1.)  That’s a lot of music.  For those who may be intimidated by such a large list, I’ve created a miniature version that contains fewer than 70 compositions (see below).  This list includes only those pieces of music on at least 10 of the original source lists.  It is an odd and fairly conservative list.  The Germans and Austrians dominate. Most of the music is symphonic, with a number of operas, but there is very little chamber music and only one piece of solo piano music.  The vast majority of the music comes from the Classical and Romantic periods (roughly 1750-1900), with nothing from the Renaissance and nothing from any composers born in the 20th Century.  There in no Chopin (!?!), no Liszt, no Shostakovich, and only one work by an American composer.  But it is an interesting list nonetheless, and contains some of the best known, most popular, and most highly-regarded pieces of classical music ever written.  I’ve organized it by composer, with the composers listed in chronological order by date of birth.  For composers with more than one piece on the list, I’ve listed the compositions in chronological order. Enjoy.

Best Classical Music: Works on 10 or More of the Original Source Lists

Antonio Vivaldi (Italy, 1678-1741)

  • The Four Seasons (1725)

Johann Sebastian Bach (Germany, 1685-1750)

  • Cello Suites (approx. 1717-1723)
  • Brandenburg Concertos (1721)
  • St. Matthew Passion (1727)
  • Goldberg Variations (1741)
  • Mass in B minor (1749)

George Frideric Handel (Germany, 1685-1759)

  • The Water Music (1717)
  • Messiah (1741)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Austria, 1756-1791)

  • Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor (1785)
  • Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major (1785)
  • The Marriage of Figaro (1786)
  • Serenade No. 13 in G major “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” (1787)
  • Symphony No. 40 in G minor (1788)
  • Symphony No. 41 in C major “Jupiter” (1788)
  • The Magic Flute (1791)
  • Clarinet Concerto in A major (1791)
  • Requiem (1792)

Ludwig van Beethoven (Germany, 1770-1827)

  • Piano Sonata No. 14 in C# minor “Moonlight” (1801)
  • Symphony No. 3 in Eb major “Eroica” (1804)
  • Violin Concerto in D major (1806)
  • Symphony No. 5 in C minor (1808)
  • Symphony No. 6 in F major “Pastoral” (1808)
  • Symphony No. 7 in A major (1812)
  • Symphony No. 9 in D minor “Choral” (1824)
  • String Quartet No. 14 in C# minor (1826)

Gioachino Rossini (Italy, 1792-1868)

  • The Barber of Seville (1816)

Franz Schubert (Austria, 1797-1828)

  • Piano Quintet in A major “The Trout” (1819)
  • Symphony No. 8 in B minor “Unfinished” (1822)
  • String Quintet in C major (1828)

Hector Berlioz (France, 1803-1869)

  • Symphonie Fantastique (1829)

Felix Mendelssohn (Germany, 1809-1847)

  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Overture (1826)
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Incidental Music (1842)

Robert Schumann (Germany, 1810-1856)

  • Piano Concerto in A minor (1845)

Richard Wagner (Germany, 1813-1883)

  • Der Ring des Nibelungen: 1. Das Rheingold (1854)
  • Der Ring des Nibelungen: 2. Die Walküre (1856)
  • Der Ring des Nibelungen: 3. Siegfried (1871)
  • Der Ring des Nibelungen: 4. Götterdämmerung (1874)

Giuseppe Verdi (Italy, 1813-1901)

  • La Traviata (1853)
  • Requiem (1874)

Anton Bruckner (Austria, 1824-1896)

  • Symphony No. 7 in E major (1881-1883, revised 1885)

Johannes Brahms (Germany, 1833-1897)

  • A German Requiem (1865-1868)
  • Violin Concerto in D major (1878)
  • Symphony No. 3 in F major (1883)
  • Symphony No. 4 in E minor (1884-1885)

Georges Bizet (France, 1838-1875)

  • Carmen (1874)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russia, 1840-1893)

  • Piano Concerto No. 1 in Bb minor (1874-1875; revised 1879 and 1888)
  • Swan Lake (1875-1876)
  • Symphony No. 5 in E minor (1888)
  • The Nutcracker (1892)
  • Symphony No. 6 in B minor “Pathetique” (1893)

Antonín Dvořák (Czech Republic, 1841-1904)

  • Symphony No. 9 in E minor “From the New World” (1893)
  • Cello Concerto in B minor (1894-1895)

Edvard Grieg (Norway, 1843-1907)

  • Piano Concerto in A minor (1868)
  • Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 (1888)
  • Peer Gynt Suite No. 2 (1891)

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (Russia, 1844-1908)

  • Scheherazade (1888)

Edward Elgar (UK, 1857-1934)

  • Cello Concerto in E minor (1919) (on 10 lists)

Gustav Mahler (Czech Republic, 1860-1911)

  • Symphony No. 5 in C# minor (1901-1902)
  • Symphony No. 9 in D major (1910)

Claude Debussy (France, 1862-1918)

  • Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1894)
  • La Mer (1903-1905)

Richard Strauss (Germany, 1864-1949)

  • Also Sprach Zarathustra (1896)

Sergei Rachmaninoff (Russia, 1873-1943)

  • Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor (1900-1901)

Béla Bartók (Hungary, 1881-1945)

  • String Quartet No. 4 in C major (1927)
  • Concerto for Orchestra (1943)

Igor Stravinsky (Russia, 1882-1971)

  • The Rite of Spring (1913)

George Gershwin (US, 1898-1937)

  • Rhapsody in Blue (1924)

 

See It To Believe It: The Updated Art Lists

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I found a bunch of new lists of best works of visual art and decided to add them to the meta-list.  Now I have over 30 source lists gathered from books and various websites. This particular meta-list is in two versions – one version (in two parts) is organized by rank and contains every work of art on four or more of the original source lists.  To look at this list, click on the links below:
Best Works of Art of All Time – Ranked, Part 1 (works of art on 6 or more lists)
Best Works of Art of All Time – Ranked, Part 2 (works on 4 or 5 lists)

The second (and much larger) version of the meta-list is organized chronologically and includes every work of art on at least two of the original 30+ source lists.  This meta-list (which I call Art History 101) is in seven parts:
Part IA (Prehistoric Era – 399 CE)
Part IB (400-1399 CE)
Part IIA (1400-1499)
Part IIB (1500-1599)
Part III (1600-1799)
Part IV (1800-1899)
Part V (1900-Present)

Please note that the artworks on this particular meta-list are primarily paintings and sculptures, with a few pieces of decorative art.  For other forms of visual art – including architecture, photography, film, and television – I have compiled separate meta-lists.

To keep with the list theme, I’ve made some lists about the updated visual arts lists, which follow below. First, the updated meta-list has led to changes in the rankings throughout the list and the top 10 has been rearranged considerably:

The New Top 10: Artworks on the Most Lists
1. Leonardo da Vinci: Mona Lisa (1503-1505)
2. Michelangelo: Frescoes, Sistine Chapel Ceiling (1508-1512)
3. Diego Velázquez: Las Meninas (1656)
4. Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)
5. Pablo Picasso: Guernica (1937)
6. Michelangelo: David (1501-1504)
7. Vincent Van Gogh: The Starry Night (1889)
8. Sandro Botticelli: The Birth of Venus (1486)
9. Francisco Goya: The Third of May, 1808 (1814)
10. Edward Munch: The Scream (1893)

There are 25 new works of art on the meta-list as the result of this latest update, and six new artists:

The New Kids on the Block, Part 1: The Artworks

  1. Unknown Artists: Great Sphinx of Giza (Egypt, c. 2530 BCE)
  2. Unknown Artist: Lyre with Bull’s Head (Mesopotamia/Iraq, c. 2550-2450)
  3. Gislebertus: Relief Sculptures, Saint-Lazare Cathedral (France, 10th-11th Century)
  4. Lorenzo Ghiberti: The Baptism of Christ (Italy, c. 1423-1427)
  5. Albrecht Altdorfer: George and the Dragon (Germany, 1510)
  6. Giorgione and Titian: Sleeping Venus (Italy, 1510) 
  7. Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The Harvesters (The Netherlands, 1565)
  8. Nicolas Poussin: Et in Arcadia ego (France, c. 1638-1640)
  9. Ogata Korin: Flowering Irises (Japan, c. 1710)
  10. Joshua Reynolds: Self-Portrait (Great Britain, c. 1748)
  11. Jacques-Louis David: The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons (France, 1789)
  12. Antonio Canova: Perseus Triumphant (Italy, 1804-1806)
  13. John Constable: Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (UK, 1831)
  14. Édouard Manet: The Execution of Emperor Maximilian (France, 1867)
  15. Vincent van Gogh: Vincent’s Chair (The Netherlands/France, 1888)
  16. Vincent Van Gogh: Starry Night over the Rhône (The Netherlands/France, 1888) 
  17. Paul Gauguin: Te Arii Vahine (The King’s Wife) (France/French Polynesia, 1896)
  18. Paul Cézanne: Still Life with Apples and Oranges (France, c. 1895-1900)
  19. Henri Matisse: The Conversation (France, 1909)
  20. Umberto Boccioni: The City Rises (Italy, 1910)
  21. Rene Magritte: Le Faux Joan Miróir (The False Mirror) (Belgium, 1928)
  22. Diego Rivera: Man, Controller of the Universe (Mexico, 1934)
  23. Jackson Pollock: Number 5, 1948 (US, 1948)
  24. Damien Hirst: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (UK, 1991)
  25. Louise Bourgeois: Maman (France/US, 1999)

New Kids on the Block, Part 2: New Artists
1. Gislebertus (France, 12th Century)
2. Ogata Korin (Japan, 1658-1716)
3. Joshua Reynolds (Great Britain, 1723-1792)
4. Diego Rivera (Mexico, 1886-1957)
5. Louise Bourgeois (France, 1911-2010)
6. Damien Hirst (UK: England, 1965- )

And, finally, here is a list of the artists with the largest number of artworks on the entire meta-list:

12 Works of Art on the Meta-List
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (The Netherlands, c. 1525/1530-1569)
Rembrandt (The Netherlands, 1606-1669)

11 Works
Titian (Italy, 1488-1576)

10 Works 
Francisco Goya (Spain, 1746-1828)

9 Works      
Vincent Van Gogh (The Netherlands, 1853-1890)

8 Works
Leonardo da Vinci (Italy, 1452-1519)
Michelangelo (Italy, 1475-1564)

7 Works
Piero della Francesca (Italy, 1416-1492)
Albrecht Dürer (Germany, 1471-1528)
Raphael (Italy, 1483-1520)
El Greco (Greece, 1541-1614)
Caravaggio (Italy, 1571-1610)
Peter Paul Rubens (Flanders/Belgium, 1577-1640)
Claude Monet (France, 1840-1926)

6 Works 
Andrea Mantegna (Italy, 1431-1506)
Diego Velázquez (Spain, 1599-1660)
J.M.W. Turner (UK, 1775-1851)
Édouard Manet (France, 1832-1883)
Pablo Picasso (Spain, 1881-1973)
Henri Matisse (France, 1869-1954)
Jackson Pollock (US, 1912-1956)

Cheer Up – The Blues Lists Are Here!

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I’ve updated my lists of best blues albums – adding a number of new lists, revising the formatting and creating two separate lists: one organized by rank (that is, with the albums on the most lists at the top) and one in chronological order.

Here are the updated lists:
Best Blues Albums of All Time – Ranked
Best Blues Albums of All Time – Chronological

The challenge of making a list of best blues albums is that so many of the albums are compilations and so many of the compilations have duplicate material.  As an example, take Sonny Boy Williamson (II), who has five albums on the list:
1. King Biscuit Time (rec. 1951-1965) (on 3 lists)
2. Down and Out Blues (rec. 1955-1958) (on 3 lists)
3. His Best (Chess, rec. 1955-1964) (on 3 lists)
4. The Essential Sonny Boy Williamson (rec. 1955-1963) (on 2 lists)
5. The Real Folk Blues/More Real Folk Blues (rec. 1957, 1960-1964) (on 3 lists)
I don’t know exactly, but my guess is that there are at least some of his tracks that are on all five albums, and probably a lot more that are on three or four.  The same problem is true for so many other blues artists.  To complicate matters, not all these compilations are of the same quality.  This creates a problem for the lister, and for the person trying to use the list to make choices about what .  My recommendation is that if you are looking for a first album to buy from a blue artist, start with my list, but in trying to decide among the compilations here take the next step of googling “what is the best compilation for [Artist’s Name]” and see what advice you get.

Hooked on Classics: The New and Improved Classical Music Lists

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I’ve updated my meta-lists of best classical music by adding several more lists to the mix and expanding the main page to include all works on three or more of the original source lists.  I’ve also added a new page with the list organized by the type of composition. Click on the links below to go directly to the classical music meta-lists:

The Best Classical Music of All Time: Ranked
The Best Classical Music of All Time: Chronological
The Best Classical Music of All Time: By Composer
The Best Classical Music of All Time: By Type of Composition

I was originally going to introduce the new and updated lists with a serious post about the definition of classical music, going into how it really should be referred to as Western art music, because “classical” technically only refers to music (much of it in sonata form) produced during the period of 1750-1828 or so (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, et al.).  But I decided against that.  Instead I decided to look at my listening history (which since 2008 or so has been tracked by the Last.fm website – they keep track of every time I listen to a song on the computer, iPod or iPhone) and find the 25 pieces of classical music I have listened to most frequently (either the entire piece or portions of it).  These don’t necessarily represent my preferences (although I like all the music here), since I usually have my playlist on “shuffle” mode, so the selection is somewhat random.  I am intrigued by the number of contemporary composers and the absence of big names like Mozart and Beethoven (even though I’ve got lots of their work in my collection).  Here’s the list of the 25 pieces of classical music I’ve listened to most frequently since 2008, arranged in chronological order by date of composition:

  1. Anonymous: Chevalier, mult estes guariz (12th Century)
  2. Anonymous: La quinte estampie real (13th Century)
  3. Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto for 2 Cellos in G minor (c. 1720)
  4. George Frideric Handel: Concerti Grossi, Op. 3 (1734)
  5. George Frideric Handel: Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749)
  6. Johann Sebastian Bach: Mass in B minor (1749)
  7. Christoph Willibald Gluck (arr. by Hector Berlioz): Orphée et Eurydice (1762, Berlioz version, 1859)
  8. Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (1859)
  9. Johannes Brahms: Violin Concerto in D, Op. 77 (1878)
  10. Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90 (1883)
  11. Claude Debussy: Mazurka (1890)
  12. Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a (1892)
  13. Claude Debussy: Children’s Corner (1908)
  14. Sergei Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19 (1917)
  15. Dmitri Shostakovich: Adagio (Elegy) for String Quartet (1931)
  16. Charles Ives: They Are There! (1942)
  17. John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (1948)
  18. Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 4 in D major (1949)
  19. Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story (1957)
  20. Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 7 in F# minor, Op. 108 (1960)
  21. Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 15 in Eb major, Op. 144 (1974)
  22. Iannis Xenaxis: Tetras for String Quartet (1983)
  23. Christopher Rouse: Kabir Padavali (1998)
  24. Arvo Pärt: Lamentate (2002)
  25. Hans Abrahamsen: Let me tell you (2013)

The Biggest and Best Movie Meta-List in the History of Cinema

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Sorry for the over-the-top title, but hyperbole can be effective in getting your attention. I’ve just created a new movie meta-list – it’s the largest one I’ve ever made (791 movies) and, for the first time, I’ve arranged it in reverse chronological order so that the most recent movies are at the top. Click here to go directly to: The Big Movie List.

To make this list I put together all the movies on three other movie meta-lists from Make Lists, Not War: Best Films of All Time – Ranked; Best Films of All Time – Ranked (Older Version); and Top 200 Movies of All Time – Using a New Methodology.  Then, I took the meta-lists from Best Films – Year by Year (which covers 2002-2016) and added the top 10 movies (or more, in the case of ties) from each Year by Year list.  The result is a comprehensive list of the best movies ever made, as determined by film critics, scholars and journalists.  Since the typical “best films of all time” list tends to skimp on recent movies, the addition of the Year-by-Year lists has infused the overall list with a large number of movies from the last 20 years.

Of course, as with all lists, many will find glaring omissions (how could they leave that out???) and a few clunkers (how could they put that in???).  But that is of course the fun of lists.  Note that these are not my personal favorite 791 movies – I haven’t even seen many of them.  I did add my personal 1-10 rating for all the movies on the list that I have seen.  If you want to see a list of my favorite films, go HERE.

If you have strong opinions one way or the other, please feel free to add a comment.

If you think this list is pretty cool, feel free to share it.

 

Building Sites: The New, Improved Architecture Lists

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Update: I recently discovered several new lists of Best Architecture, Best Buildings, etc., and added them to the existing lists.  I also went through the Best Architecture and Best Architecture – Chronological lists and added more pictures: I mean, LOTS MORE PICTURES.  I tried to show aerial views in many cases, and also street level views of tall buildings. For ruins, I tried to find artist’s conceptions of what the building looked like in its heyday.  I think you will like the improvements.  Click on the links below to see the new, improved sites:

Best Architecture of All Time – The Critics’ Picks
— lists every work of architecture on 4 or more of the 24+ original source lists
— organized by rank (that is, with the items on the most lists at the top)
— items on the same number of lists are organized in chronological order

Best Architecture of all Time – Chronological
— considerably longer list than the above list
— lists all the buildings/architectural works on 3 or more of the original source lists
— organized in chronological order by date that construction began (if available)

As a result of the new Best Architecture lists I found, I was able to add 7 new buildings to the lists.  They are:

  • St. Pancras Railway Station. London, England, UK.
  • Natural History Museum. London, England, UK.
  • Imperial Hotel. Tokyo, Japan (destroyed in 1968)
  • Washington National Cathedral. Washington, D.C.
  • Getty Center, J. Paul Getty Museum. Los Angeles, California, US.
  • Reichstag (restoration and renovation). Berlin, Germany.
  • The Shard (London Bridge Tower). London, England, UK.

Other pages that contain information about architecture and building:

Best Architects of All Time – The Critics’ Picks
(organized chronologically by date of birth and listing each architect’s most important works)

Best Works of Civil Engineering

Best Works of Civil Engineering – Chronological

A warm welcome to my LinkedIn connections, who will now be getting posts from Make Lists, Not War: The Meta-Lists Website.

 

The Sound of Silents: The Best Films from the Years Before Talkies

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Silent films were never silent.  At the first official movie screening by the Lumiere brothers in Paris in December 1895, a guitarist accompanied the presentation of 10 short films, including the first documentary, Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory, and the first comedy, The Sprinkler Sprinkled.  In the U.S. it was more common for a pianist or – in the case of major films in big cities – a small orchestra, to accompany early films, which due to lack of the requisite technology had no synchronized soundtrack.  The musicians began by improvising or linking together popular melodies to illustrate what they saw on the screen, often adding sound effects for galloping horses, thunderclaps, ringing bells and other actions. In 1908, the first fully-composed film scores appeared in France (by Camille Saint-Saens) and Russia.  The first major U.S. film to have a score was D.W. Griffith’s racist blockbuster The Birth of the Nation, with music composed by Joseph Breil, in 1915.  The giant movie theaters built in the 1910s and 1920s often incorporated immense theater organs that allowed for musical accompaniment, which usually involved a combination of following the score as well as improvisation and elaborate sound effects.  The switch to synchronized sound after the success of The Jazz Singer in 1927, a change that permitted the actors to speak their dialogue and allowed moviemakers to incorporate music into the film itself, put thousands of movie theater musicians out of work.

Modern audiences often have difficulty watching movies from the “silent” era.  The acting style necessary to communicate without spoken dialogue – essentially a form of mime – seems histrionic and over-the-top to many now.  (Even some contemporaries agreed. When Charles Chaplin made A Woman of Paris in 1923 – one of the few Chaplin films that did not star The Little Tramp – he specifically instructed his actors to adopt a more subdued acting style than was the norm. As a result the film seems more modern than many other silent films.)  The stilted, corny or moralistic tone of some of the intertitles can also be offputting to modern audiences.  On top of these substantive concerns, there are also physical problems with many silent films – many were badly preserved.  In fact, we are lucky to have any silent films left at all – it is estimated that 70% of all feature films from the pre-talkie era have deteriorated beyond repair or were deliberately destroyed after the switch to the new sound technology.

But these difficulties should not dissuade movie buffs from checking out some of the classic silent films, particularly those made in the 1920s.  It was during the silent era that filmmakers developed the basic visual vocabulary of moviemaking. By the mid-1920s, studios around the world were turning out high-quality films, some of them with dazzling visual technique and inventiveness.  In fact, the first years of sound movies, which required the noisy film cameras to be placed in soundproof (and immobile) boxes and anchored the actors to the location of the nearest microphone, saw a decrease in the cinematic inventiveness and overall quality of films. Look at many sound films from the late 1920s and early 1930s and you will see film returning to the days when everything looked like a filmed play – no moving cameras, few or no tracking shots – everything static.  The transition period is lovingly parodied by Betty Comden and Adolph Green in their screenplay for Singin’ in the Rain, the 1952 musical directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly.

Because there was no dialogue, and intertitles could easily be translated into any language, silent film was a more international art than film after the introduction of sound. Germany during the Weimar Republic was a particularly strong producer of high-quality films in various genres: horror (Nosferatu), science fiction (Metropolis), crime thriller (Dr. Mabuse – The Gambler), and drama/social commentary (The Last Laugh; Pandora’s Box).  Several of the best German directors – Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Sternberg – brought their expertise to Hollywood in time to produce silent film masterpieces on both sides of the Atlantic.

Perhaps the most accessible of the silent films to modern audiences are the comedies. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and other comic geniuses created personae that appeared in film after film in one outrageous fix after another.  The relative critical reputations of Chaplin and Keaton have see-sawed over the years.  At times, the sublime mix of comedy and pathos that characterizes Chaplin’s best work receives top billing; then the pendulum swings to the unsentimental acrobatics of the stone-faced Keaton, who never asks the audience for its sympathy.

I urge you to take another look at silent films, many of which are available online either free on YouTube or through a streaming service.  Or take the DVDs out of your local library.

To give you a selection of the best silent films that have been preserved, I collected 10 lists of “Best Silent Films” and made two meta-lists.  One organizes the movies by rank, that is, with the movies on the most lists at the top.  The other list is chronological.  Enjoy.

Best Silent Films of All Time – The Critics’ Picks
Best Silent Films of All Time – Chronological

My Personal Year-End Round Up: Books and Movies

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It’s not quite the end of 2016, but like many of you out there, I am in a rush for the year to be over, so I’m publishing my end of year summary a few days early.  Here are some of the highlights of my year in movie-watching and book-reading.

MOVIES
Number of Movies Seen in 2016: 64

Category
Feature Films: 37
Short Films: 17
Documentaries: 10

Date of Movie
1920-1930: 12
1930-1959: 10
1960-1979: 4
1980-1999: 3
2000-2014: 16
2015: 9
2016: 9

Highest Rated Movies
10/10
Shoe Shine (Italy, De Sica, 1946)
Anomalisa (US, Johnson & Kaufman, 2015)
Moonlight (US, Jenkins, 2016)

9/10
Ballet mécanique (France, Léger & Murphy, 1924)
The Freshman (US, Newmeyer & Taylor, 1925)
Ghosts Before Breakfast (Germany, Richter, 1928)
Lot in Sodom (US. Webber & Watson, 1933)
Meshes of the Afternoon (US, Deren & Hammid, 1943)
21-87 (US, Lipsett, 1964)
Land of Silence and Darkness (West Germany, Herzog, 1971)
The Cruise (US, Miller, 1998)
The Secret in their Eyes (Argentina, Campanella, 2009)
The Big Short (US, McKay, 2015)
45 Years (UK, Haigh, 2015)
Tangerine (US, Baker, 2015)
Son of Saul (Hungary, Jeles, 2015)

BOOKS
Number of books finished in 2016: 12

Category
Fiction: 4
Non-Fiction: 4
Epic Poems: 4

Date Published
1000-1299: 5
1300-1799: 0
1800-1999: 1
2000-2016: 6

Highest Rated Books
FIve Stars
The Tale of Genji (Japan, 1021). By Shikibu Murasaki
Europe Central (US, 2005). By William T. Vollmann
Lawrence in Arabia (UK, 2013). By Scott Anderson