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Originally posted 2/22/2019. January 22, 2019 marked the 10-year anniversary of the DMDB blog! To honor that, Dave’s Music Database announced its own Hall of Fame! The first 12 inductees were the “Songs of the Decade” from the 1900s through the 2010s (see here). Now, a month later, the DMDB inducts the first batch of albums – the top albums from each decade from the 1930s through the 2010s. Note: click on an album title to see its more complete DMDB page and referenced footnotes. |
Robert Johnson The Complete Recordings (recorded 1936-37, released 1990)Inducted February 2019 as an “Album of the Decade.” |
| “If you are starting your blues collection from the ground up, be sure to make this your very first purchase.” A-J This Mississippi-born blues singer, guitarist, and harmonica player was only 27 when he died, leaving a mere 29 songs captured in two series of recording sessions. Despite his slim body of work, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame called it “the bedrock upon which modern blues and rock and roll were built.” RH Rolling Stones’ guitarist Keith Richards said, “You want to know how good the blues can get? Well, this is it.” RJ Eric Clapton called him “the most important blues singer that ever lived.” WK Read more. |  |
Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II (composers) South Pacific (cast album, 1949)Inducted February 2019 as an “Album of the Decade.” |
| Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s South Pacific is “one of the most beloved musicals ever to hit the stage.” PL “Critical response to the Broadway opening…was probably as uniformly ecstatic as for any show in history.” MK It amassed 1,925 performances on Broadway A-C and another 802 in London. MK Its nearly five-year Broadway run was “longer than any musical before it except Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!.” A-C The accompanying cast album spent 69 weeks atop the Billboard charts – the most weeks spent at #1 in the chart’s history. Read more. |  |
Miles Davis Kind of Blue (1959)Inducted February 2019 as an “Album of the Decade.” |
| “Kind of Blue has been called the most famous and influential jazz recording of all time.” NO It “became a how-to of jazz recordings, a standard by which all others would be judged” RV and “has influenced generations of jazz and other musicians.” YN “Many consider this recording to be one of the most important jazz recordings of any era.” NRR This Grammy Hall of Fame and National Recording Registry inductee is the the top jazz album of all time, according to the DMDB. Read more. |  |
The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)Inducted February 2019 as an “Album of the Decade.” |
| Some argue there are better Beatles’ albums, “yet no album is as historically important as this. After Sgt. Pepper, there were no rules to follow.” A-B It “changed the course of popular music forever” CD with “its ambition, conceptual unity, drug references, elaborate cover art, [and] bizarre sound effects.” RS’97 It “led serious music lovers, many ‘classical snobs’ included, to finally recognize rock music” GS “as actual art.” BA “Many people who had never bought a rock record bought Sgt. Pepper’s.” VH1 Read more. |  |
Pink Floyd The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)Inducted February 2019 as an “Album of the Decade.” |
| With Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd delivered an album that concentrated their psychedelic sound into a cohesive collection of songs about madness. The conceptual work achieved the rare trifecta of out-of-the-gate success (their first #1 album in the U.S.), long-term chart stature (a record-setting 14 years+ on the Billboard album chart) and near-reverential critical acclaim. It has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and National Recording Registry. Read more. |  |
Michael Jackson Thriller (1982)Inducted February 2019 as an “Album of the Decade.” |
| Fueled by the unprecedented feat of seven top-ten singles, Thriller became the world’s all-time biggest-selling album. It gave Jackson a level of superstardom on par with the Beatles and Elvis Presley. Videos for “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” and “Thriller” made him the most iconic artist of the MTV generation. Thriller created the template to be followed by any future act aspiring to achieve a blockbuster, juggernaut album. Read more. |  |
Nirvana Nevermind (1991)Inducted February 2019 as an “Album of the Decade.” |
| Nirvana “planted the alternative flag on the Iwo Jima of American consciousness” CS with their “guitar-heavy blend of bubblegum punk.” SK If the sound of grunge feels overly “familiar now, it’s only because thousands of rock records that followed it were trying very hard to cop its style.” DW Nevermind served as a “foundation for most of the rock…of the ‘90s…loud, distorted guitars; raging, sometime screaming vocals; and lyrics that range from the pessimistic, to the positive, and to the apathetic.” JC Read more. |  |
Eminem The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)Inducted February 2019 as an “Album of the Decade.” |
| “On his masterful second album, The Marshall Mathers LP, A-E Eminem “blurs the line between autobiography and cartoons in hilarious and vulgar high-velocity rhymes.” UT “He doesn’t offer any apologies if you can’t sort the fact from the fiction. As an artist, he’s supposed to create his own world, and with this terrific second effort, he certainly has. It may be a world that is as infuriating as it is intriguing, but it is without question his own, which is far more than most of his peers are able to accomplish.” A-E Read more. |  |
Adele 21 (2011)Inducted February 2019 as an “Album of the Decade.” |
| In his 2011 review of this Album of the Year Grammy winner, Consequence of Sound’s Nick Freed prophetically said, “Pop music should take more cues from…this album…Adele should be the future of the radio, and in the near future she will be.” NF Her sophomore outing showcases her “titanic vocal ability” A-A and extends her talents as a “bluesy pop diva with a singer/songwriter’s soul.” A-A Even as she reveals her “seemingly bottomless capacity for heartbreak,” A-A she avoids “the pitfalls of sappiness and triteness that can easily come with the lovelorn.” NF Read more. |  |
