BaristaBabe's Contribution to The Album Project

BaristaBabe contributed her list of top 25 albums for The Album Project.

Alright, so my friend A Futile Mistake is running his own Album Project and asked me to participate by giving him what I think of as my top 25 albums. Now, these are by no means The Greatest Albums Of All Time. Most of them are not revolutionary, earth shattering, musically unique, and so forth. My criteria was basically whether or not it was an album I could listen to from beginning to end without skipping anything (with a few exceptions). Which would be the criteria I'd use if I had to reduce my music collection down to only 25 albums.

So, in no particular order (well, with the exception of the first handful, as those three always come to mind when someone asks me my favorite albums):

1. Ani Difranco - Little Plastic Castles
2. Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
3. Tool - Aenima
4. Michael Jackson - Thriller
5. Pink Floyd - Division Bell
6. Beatles - Abbey Road
7. Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
8. Fiona Apple - Tidal
9. Mike Doughty - Haughty Melodic
10. Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds - Live at Luther College
11. Better than Ezra - Live at House of Blues
12. A Perfect Circle - Mer de Noms
13. The Eagles - Selected Works: 1972-1999
14. Sia - Colour the Small One
15. Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
16. Depeche Mode - Exciter
17. The Beatles - The Red Album: 1962-1966
18. The Cure - The Cure: Greatest Hits
19. The Pretenders - Greatest Hits
20. Jonatha Brooke - Live
21. Ani Difranco - Like I Said
22. Soul Coughing - Lust in Phaze: The Best of Soul Coughing
23. Tool - 10,000 Days
24. The Long Winters - When I Pretend to Fall
25. Harry Connick, Jr. - When Harry Met Sally...

This would, no doubt, change if I were to try again in a month or if I had written it a year ago. I would probably miss Matt Nathanson and Jason Mraz, eventually. Maybe the Rolling Stones. I also tried to do most of it without sifting through my music collection (I was mostly successful), which means huge sections of it have no doubt been forgotten. It's not part of the rules, but if I could include just two more songs, they would be "Angie" by the Rolling Stones and "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen. Imagining my music collection without both is sad, but I'm just not in love with any of the whole albums both songs are on. I went for several greatest hits albums because I wanted to include the artist but couldn't settle on a single album. Runners up for instrumental albums: The Hours Soundtrack and Live at The Quick: Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.


Thank you for taking the time to do this.

I still have lists coming in and I am astounding by the good taste of the people contributing as well as the variety of the music.

Please take the time to contribute yours.

(Originally posted here.)