Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 6 (My 100 Favorite Albums)

In five previous essays (here, here, here, here, here), I detail how I used appearances on 434 mixes (August 1981 to November 2023) and total plays to calculate a score for 9,560 tracks. Using these Track Scores (“TS”), I ranked my favorites from a tie for #7,529 (2,032 tracks with one play and no mix appearances) to #1, “Kind of Blue” by Miles Davis.

Theoretically, it should now be easy to calculate Album Scores by summing TS across albums.

But when has anything in this process been easy?

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When I acquired a new desktop PC in 2013, I “cleaned” my iTunes data: assigning correct title and artist, plus year and mode of initial release – usually a studio album, but sometimes a single (7” and 12”), EP or one-off release – along with album art and musical genre.[1] As of May 2024, there are 9,948 tracks in my iTunes, though only 9,560 are used for analytic purposes here.[2]

In the process, I learned that many tracks were not initially released on a traditional album (two-sided vinyl or single CD typically consisting of 8-12 tracks), as Table 1 below shows. Also, while I have fully digitized 505 traditional albums, there are at least 36 I own but have not fully digitized,[3] and nearly 2,0000 from which I “own” only a few tracks, topped by six from the Xanadu Original Soundtrack.[4] There are best-of, live and multi-artist collections which remained even after accounting for the initial mode/year of release for every track. Thus, Hall and Oates first released “Adult Education” and “Say It Isn’t So” on their 1983 best-of Rock ‘n Soul Part I; I do not want to double-count the other tracks on the album. When I first summed tracks by album, artist and year, I then had to combine 214 of these sums into 55 albums because they contained tracks by multiple artists (e.g., film soundtracks) or were jazz “albums” with multiple years of release (e.g., Water Babies by Miles Davis consists of three tracks recorded in each of 1967 and 1968). Finally, there are the “albums” that are really EPs, singles or “one-offs.”

Table 1: Categories of Initial “Album” For 9,560 Tracks

Mode	Own	Fully Digitized?	# Albums	#Tracks	Mean Year
12” Single	Yes	Yes	4	11	1985.5
12” Single	No	No	25	26	1985.9
Album	Yes	Yes	454	4,889	1980.7
Album	Yes	No	36	90	1980.4
Album	Once	No	9	30	1980.7
Album	No	No	1,997	3,176	1979.1
Best of Album	Yes	Yes	37	76	1984.3
Best of Album	Yes	No	6	13	1981.2
Live Album	Yes	Yes	14	75	1979.5
Live Album	Yes	No	1	1	1976.0
Live Album	No	No	1	2	1975.0
Extended Play	Yes	Yes	8	38	1988.4
Extended Play	Yes	No	2	4	1982.0
Extended Play	No	No	24	34	1982.2
Single	Yes	Yes	78	170	1973.0
Single	Yes	No	460	460	1973.1
One-off	Yes	Yes	465	465	1945.6
TOTAL			3,621	9,560	1974.2

Fully 70.6% (n=2,555) of the 3,621 “albums” containing my tracks are in the traditional form, of which 505 are entirely digitized. In total, these albums contribute 8,352 (87.3%) tracks, with a mean release year of 1979.5, higher than the overall mean of 1974.2. Overall, though, I do not fully “own” a majority (55.2%) of the traditional albums yielding tracks. On the other end are 1,003 singles and one-offs (27.7%; including CD singles with more than two tracks) that account for 1,095 (11.5%) tracks. The 538 singles have a mean release year of 1973.1, just lower than the overall mean, while the 465 one-offs – almost entirely blues, classical and jazz – have a mean release year of 1945.6, far lower than the overall mean. Finally, there are 63 (1.7%) 12-inch singles and EPs, accounting for 113 (1.2%) tracks. They tend to be more recent releases, with a mean release year of 1984.7.

Meanwhile, not all of these “albums” are of identical length. Traditional albums had five tracks on each side, for a total of 10. The mean number of tracks on the fully-digitized albums I own is 10.8. However, this mean is inflated by 49 albums with at least 15 tracks; the median value is 10. EPs, though, usually contain four-to-six tracks, while singles have two-four tracks. And one-offs run solo.

In other words, simply summing TS by album, artist and year yields values that:

• For completely-digitized traditional albums, depend to some extent upon the number of tracks on the album, from 2 (No Pussyfooting by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno, Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield) to 38 (Space Ghost’s Musical Bar-B-Que by Cartoon Planet Band)
• For all other traditional albums, do not distinguish between owned and not owned. Presumably, I have played the non-digitized tracks at least once on the former and never on the latter
• Essentially treat not-completely-digitized albums the same as EPs and non-7” singles
• Treat 7” singles and one-offs identically

There is one final issue. Track scores for an album with a higher-than-usual number of tracks can sum to a large negative number, which is not an accurate representation of how much I like the album, even when I have put a relatively high number of its tracks onto mixes. An example is -21.329 for Sandinista! by The Clash. While I put seven of its tracks onto mixes, the remaining 30 have a mean TS of -0.857, or roughly two plays each.

We start with the last issue.

There are albums I enjoy listening to straight through – Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run comes to mind. There are albums I like except for one or two tracks – Stan Ridgway’s The Big Heat comes to mind. There are albums that contain one or two tracks I genuinely like while the rest is just meh – Jefferson Starship’s Red Octopus comes to mind. And then there are albums that are split almost evenly down the middle – I love half the tracks and quite dislike half the tracks. Examples include The Police’s Ghost in the Machine, Jackson Browne’s Hold Out and The Eagles’ The Long Run. Thus, I want to be able to subtract out these disliked tracks without creating high negative scores, as with Sandinista!.

After some trial and error, I settled on adding the absolute value of the median – 0.757 – to every Track Score. This maintained the same arithmetic distance between each TS while making the lowest possible value -0.948 + 0.757 = -0.191. Now, summing the TS for Sandinista! yields a far more reasonable value of 6.680.

Next, I addressed the question of varying number of tracks. For not-full-digitized albums I own, I assigned a value of -0.191 (see preceding paragraph) to each non-digitized track. For not-fully digitized albums I do not own, I assigned a value of -1.012[5] to each non-digitized track, assuming these albums have 10 tracks. I then standardized the 454 completely-digitized albums to 10 tracks by multiplying the sum of median-adjusted TS by the square root of (10/x), where x = number of album tracks, unless x>14, when the multiplier was 10/x. For live albums, I halved the sum of median-adjusted TS, while I multiplied the initial score for best-of albums by x/10, where x is the number of tracks not assigned to other albums.

I used the same logic for EP’s and all forms of singles – other than also multiplying these values by 5/10 or 10/5 (EPs, above and below 0), 4/10 or 10/4 (12” singles) and 2/10 or 2 (7” singles[6]) to account for the typical maximum number of tracks on these media. That leaves only “one-off” tracks, which I multiplied by 1/10.

Thus, I had now accounted for ownership, incomplete digitization and typical number of tracks.

There was still one remaining problem, however.

Albums are more than just the sum of their tracks – they have a kind of gestalt value. When I calculated Album Scores previously, Track Scores topped out well below 10.0, with only a handful higher than 4.0. This kept high-ranking tracks from dominating Album Score. Now, however, 482 tracks have TS≥4.0, 56 have TS≥10.0 and six have TS≥20.0. No amount of subtraction will keep one or more high-ranking tracks from dominating an albums’ score. To “flatten” these high scores, I used the square root of all TS>1.[7]

Thus, the initial album score is the sum of Track Scores that have been:

• Increased by 0.757
• Converted to a square root if median-adjusted TS > 1.0
• Adjusted for not-yet-digitized tracks
• Adjusted for typical number of tracks on a form of media, based upon a traditional album having 10 tracks

All that was left to do was calculate a Historic Adjustment – a small percentage increase in these initial Album Scores – as I did for tracks. These include appearance on a top six ranking in 1981[8] or being a pre-1981 favorite; appearance on a top 50 in 1993, 1994, 1998, 1999; and other. The latter category includes enjoying listening to from start to finish, whether it was recorded in its entirety onto a mix, whether I replaced an older copy with a newer copy (usually vinyl to CD), and so forth. The weighted sum[9] was then divided by 10 and added to one. Multiplying initial album score by Historic Adjustment yields the final Album Score (“ALS”) for all 3,621 “albums.”[10]

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My 100 favorite albums by Album Score are presented in Table 2 below. Nine albums “bubble under” with scores of 6.505 to 6.737 (Manifesto by Roxy Music; Face Value by Phil Collins, Katy Lied by Steely Dan, Peter Gabriel [IV], Boys Want Sex In the Morning by Uncle Bonsai, Can’t Buy a Thrill by Steely Dan, Swing (CD accompanying novel) by Rupert Holmes, Night Moves by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Moving Pictures by Rush)

Table 2: Matt Berger’s 100 Favorite Albums (now as of May 2026)

#	Title	Artist	Year	Album Score
100	Who’s Next	The Who	1971	6.745
99	And Then Theree Were Three	Genesis	1978	6.747
98	Look Sharp!	Joe Jackson	1979	6.762
97	One Second	Yello	1987	6.836
96	War	U2	1983	6.849
95	You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess	Yello	1983	6.885
94	Gaucho	Steely Dan	1980	6.911
93	Tourist	St. Germain	2000	6.936
92	Abbey Road	The Beatles	1969	6.979
91	Genesis	Genesis	1983	6.995
90	Darkness on the Edge of Town	Bruce Springsteen	1978	7.004
89	Welcome to the Pleasure Dome	Frankie Goes to Hollywood	1984	7.063
88	The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway	Genesis	1974	7.074
87	Crime of the Century	Supertramp	1974	7.101
86	Fear of Music	Talking Heads	1978	7.166
85	Rumours	Fleetwood Mac	1977	7.216
84	Wish You Were Here	Pink Floyd	1975	7.225
83	Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band	The Beatles	1967	7.249
82	Icehouse	Icehouse	1981	7.254
81	Cosmic Thing	The B-52’s	1989	7.270
80	Music for the Masses	Depeche Mode	1987	7.312
79	Questionnaire	Chas Jankel	1981	7.373
78	Shuttered Room	The Fixx	1982	7.447
77	Water Babies	Miles Davis	1967-68	7.457
76	Panorama	The Cars	1980	7.556
75	Reach the Beach	The Fixx	1983	7.751
74	Wind & Wuthering	Genesis	1976	7.775
73	Violator	Depeche Mode	1990	7.906
72	Ellington Indigos	Duke Ellington and His Orchestra	1958	7.910
71	Hold Out	Jackson Browne	1980	7.915
70	So	Peter Gabriel	1986	8.133
69	Sketches of Spain	Miles Davis	1960	8.140
68	For Your Pleasure	Roxy Music	1973	8.183
67	True Colours	Split Enz	1980	8.198
66	All Four One	The Motels	1982	8.238
65	Drama	Yes	1980	8.255
64	Twin Peaks Original Soundtrack	Angelo Badalamenti/Julee Cruise	1990	8.312
63	A Lonely Grain of Corn	Uncle Bonsai	1984	8.344
62	Feline	The Stranglers	1982	8.415
61	I Robot	The Alan Parsons Project	1977	8.492
60	More Songs About Buildings and Food	Talking Heads	1978	8.595
59	Purple Rain Original Soundtrack	Prince and the Revolution	1984	8.784
58	Happy?	Public Image Ltd.	1987	8.816
57	Anatomy	Stan Ridgway	1999	8.930
56	Care	Shriekback	1983	9.028
55	Avalon	Roxy Music	1982	9.174
54	Claro Que Si	Yello	1981	9.278
53	Life’s Hard And Then You Die	It’s Immaterial	1986	9.340
52	Discipline	King Crimson	1981	9.439
51	Call of the West	Wall of Voodoo	1982	9.470
50	Heaven & Hell	Joe Jackson and Friends	1997	9.610
49	Pretenders	The Pretenders	1980	9.681
48	Computer World	Kraftwerk	1981	9.728
47	Eve	The Alan Parsons Project	1979	9.822
46	Breakfast in America	Supertramp	1979	9.836
45	Night and Day	Joe Jackson	1982	9.949
44	Black Diamond	Stan Ridgway	1995	10.246
43	With Sympathy	Ministry	1983	10.282
42	Aja	Steely Dan	1977	10.524
41	Flesh + Blood	Roxy Music	1980	10.529
40	Remain in Light	Talking Heads	1980	10.781
39	The Hot Rock	Sleater-Kinney	1999	10.802
38	Evening Star	Robert Fripp and Brian Eno	1975	10.838
37	Vienna	Ultravox	1980	10.858
36	Mosquitos	Stan Ridgway	1989	10.892
35	Replicas	Tubeway Army	1979	10.913
34	Hammett Original Soundtrack	John Barry	1982	10.938
33	Trespass	Genesis	1970	10.975
32	Candy-O	The Cars	1979	11.257
31	Spooky	Lush	1993	11.365
30	Dub Housing	Pere Ubu	1979	11.400
29	A Walk Across the Rooftops	The Blue Nile	1984	11.561
28	Duke	Genesis	1980	11.645
27	Waiata	Split Enz	1988	11.703
26	The Key of Cool	Mitchell Froom	1984	12.228
25	Green Thoughts	The Smithereens	1988	12.309
24	Pleasure Victim	Berlin	1982	12.376
23	A Flock of Seagulls	A Flock of Seagulls	1982	12.563
22	True	Spandau Ballet	1983	12.636
21	Selling England by the Pound	Genesis	1973	12.653
20	The Hurting	Tears For Fears	1983	12.743
19	The Public Eye Original Soundtrack	Mark Isham	1992	12.904
18	New Gold Dream (81/82/83/84)	Simple Minds	1982	13.450
17	Abacab	Genesis	1981	13.855
16	Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret	Soft Cell	1981	14.479
15	Shabooh Shoobah	INXS	1982	14.481
14	Rio	Duran Duran	1982	14.985
13	Partners in Crime	Rupert Holmes	1979	15.195
12	The Lexicon of Love	ABC	1982	16.257
11	Dare!	The Human League	1981	16.437
10	Ghost in the Machine	The Police	1981	16.451
9	The Big Heat	Stan Ridgway	1986	16.899
8	Before and After Science	Brian Eno	1977	17.285
7	Born To Run	Bruce Springsteen	1975	17.306
6	Quartet	Ultravox	1982	18.377
5	Bête Noire	Bryan Ferry	1987	18.626
4	Trick of the Tail	Genesis	1976	23.124
3	Fisherman’s Blues	The Waterboys	1988	23.470
2	The Cars	The Cars	1978	23.842
1	Kind of Blue	Miles Davis	1959	26.961

As with my top 100 tracks, there is a clear tilt toward Anglo-Irish white male pop and rock of the 1970s and 1980s. Setting aside Australia’s Icehouse and INXS, and New Zealand’s Split Enz (two albums), only France’s St. Germain, Germany’s Kraftwerk and Switzerland’s Yello (three albums) are not either American or British. Besides three Miles Davis albums, the only African-American artists to record one of my top 100 albums are Duke Ellington and His Orchestra and Prince & the Revolution.

The only solo female artist to record one of my top 100 albums is Julee Cruise, who wrote and sings on three tracks on the Twin Peaks Original Soundtrack. The all-female trio Sleater-Kinney sits at #39 with The Hot Rock, while Fleetwood Mac, Lush and Uncle Bonsai each have two female lead singers. Berlin, The Motels and The Pretenders are fronted by Terri Nunn, Martha Davis and Chrissie Hynde, respectively.

Five of my top 100 albums are original soundtracks from a film or television series – one each from Angelo Badalamenti/Julee Cruise, John Barry, Mitchell Froom, Mark Isham and Prince & the Revolution (albeit a pop/funk/rock mashup), while the Davis and Ellington albums are jazz. The album by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno is ambient, while the St. Germain album is a kind of electronic jazz. Uncle Bonsai is an alternative folk trio.

Although this list ranges from 1958 (Ellington Indigos) to 2000 (Tourist), only seven albums in my top 100 – adding the three Davis albums and two albums by The Beatles – were released earlier than 1970, while only nine albums – adding Anatomy, Black Diamond, Heaven & Hell, The Hot Rock, The Public Eye Original Soundtrack, Spooky, Twin Peaks and Violator were released after 1989. The remaining 85 albums are split between the 1970s (27) and 1980s (58). The mean year of release is 1981.0 (vs. 1974.1 overall), with a median of 1981 (vs. 1979). Exactly half (50) of these albums were released between 1979 and 1983, topped by 14 released in 1982.

These 100 tracks were released by just 68 artists, led by Genesis with nine including #4 Trick of the Tail, followed by Ridgway with four – five each if you count Ridgway-led Wall of Voodoo. If you add former lead singer Bryan Ferry’s Bete Noire album (#5), Roxy Music has four. The Cars, Davis, Joe Jackson, Talking Heads and Yello each have three albums, while The Alan Parsons Project, The Beatles, Depeche Mode, The Fixx, Split Enz, Bruce Springsteen, Supertramp and Ultravox each have two.

Brian Eno has one solo album, the top 10 Before and After Science, but he also appears with Robert Fripp on Evening Star and on Roxy Music’s For Your Pleasure, while producing both Talking Heads albums. Fripp also appears on King Crimson’s Discipline as does Adrian Belew, who plays on Talking Heads’ Remain In Light. Tony Levin is the lead bass player on Discipline and Peter Gabriel’s So.

Oh, and Hynde and Simple Minds’ lead singer Jim Kerr were once married to each other.

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As interesting as these facts are, they do not address the key question: are these actually my 100 favorite albums?

As with my 100 favorite tracks…yes, for the most part.

I can certainly quibble with a few albums. Hold Out is a bit high despite containing three tracks in my top 500 (“Boulevard,” “Disco Apocalypse,” “That Girl Could Sing”). I may have had a “Frankie Say…Relax” sweatshirt in 1984, but Welcome to the Pleasure Dome feels a bit too high, as well. And as much as I love Genesis, Wind and Wuthering might be overkill.

Fine, but which three albums would replace them?

If I take the back-of-the-envelope 0.317 95% confidence interval (“CI”) I estimated for Track Scores and multiply it by 2.64, the overall mean number of tracks per album, I get an equally-back-of-the-envelope Album Score 95% CI of 0.837. Albums #101-124 are within 0.837 of Who’s Next– including Barry’s The Cotton Club Original Soundtrack (#111; Top 50 in 1999), King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King (#115) and a former top 10 album throughout the 1990s: Roxy Music’s Country Life (#118).

That all said, 33 of these albums appeared in my top 50 when I first ranked my favorite music in January 1993, while 53 appeared on at least one top 50 ranking between 1993 and 1999. Before and After Science, Bête Noire by Bryan Ferry, Trick of the Tail, and Quartet by Ultravox were in the top 10 in all four previous rankings, with Quartet always #1. The lowest ranked – excluding a Split Enz best-of album, which no longer qualifies – album from that first top 10 is Happy? by Public Image Ltd. at #58.

By contrast, six of my current 100 favorites albums had not even been released – and The Public Eye had only premiered two months earlier – in January 1993. That leaves 47 albums which did not appear on my Top 50 in the 1990s. This is a very clean split between “long-time favorites” and “newcomers,” demonstrating strong face validity.

I purchased Davis’ Kind of Blue in the summer of 1998. That September I put its third track, “Blue in Green,” on Stuff and Such, Vol. LXII, which I made for a trip to Maine with my then-girlfriend. The other five tracks on the album, including the alternate take of “Flamenco Sketches,” has appeared on at least one mix sense, while “Blue in Green” has been my favorite track since around 2003. Kind of Blue debuted on the 1999 top 100 ranking at #10, and it would have been #1 had I ranked my albums in 2004. I have considered it my favorite album since around 2000. Meanwhile, Fisherman’s Blues by The Waterboys is the closest my wife Nell and I have to “our favorite” album. It is essentially tied with The Cars and Trick of the Tail for my favorite album with lyrics.

Quartet, meanwhile, tops the 15 albums in my current top 100 I associate with Philadelphia’s short-lived “alternative rock” station, I-92 Rock of the 80s, which broadcast over the first seven months of 1983. Listening to this radio station as often as I could, I first heard tracks by Berlin, The Fixx, INXS, Ministry, Shriekback, Simple Minds, Spandau Ballet, Tears For Years, Wall of Voodoo and, of course, Ultravox. I also had more exposure to The Stranglers, U2[11] and Yello (“I Love You” from You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess). Throw in other early 1980s albums in a broad “new wave/post punk/synth pop” category by ABC, The Blue Nile, Duran Duran, A Flock of Seagulls, The Human League, Icehouse, Joe Jackson, Chas Jankel, Kraftwerk, The Motels, The Police, The Pretenders, Soft Cell, Split Enz (2), Ultravox and Yello – as well as the first Joe Jackson and Tubeway Army albums, and three albums each by The Cars and Talking Heads (all released between 1978 and 80) – and you have 40 albums, by far the largest bloc. Falling just outside this bloc are later albums by The B-52s, Depeche Mode (2), Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Public Image Ltd., Stan Ridgway (4) and Yello, as well as the difficult-to-classify experimentation of Pere Ubu’s Dub Housing.

The next largest bloc (23) – dominated by nine albums from Genesis and three from Roxy Music – combines progressive and art rock. It also includes two albums each from Alan Parsons Project and Supertramp, and one each from Eno, Ferry, Fripp & Eno, Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Pink Floyd and Yes.

The remaining 27 albums, finally, range from jazz (5) to soundtrack (5) to classical-influenced (Heaven and Hell) to folk-influenced (Fisherman’s Blues, A Lonely Grain of Corn) to pop (Partners in Crime) to classic rock (9; two each from The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen and Steely Dan, one each from Jackson Browne, Fleetwood Mac and The Who) to the varied alternative music forms of It’s Immaterial (Indie Pop), Lush (Shoegaze), Sleater-Kinney (Indie Rock) and The Smithereens.

In the next, and final, installment of this series, I combine Track and Album Scores into Artist Score, with a few major and minor tweaks.

Until next time…and if you like what you read here, please consider making a donation. Thank you.

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[1] First-listed in either Wikipedia or AllMusic

[2] I have not yet “cleaned” (or played) 142 recently-added tracks, while 246 live versions of studio tracks have been “collapsed” into their original studio versions.

[3] This does not include at least seven best-of or live albums – and at least one studio album, Music For Films by Brian Eno, from which I have digitized zero tracks.

[4] Three from Electric Light Orchestra, two from Olivia Newton-John, and one from Olivia Newton-John and Cliff Richard

[5] Track Score for a track with no mix appearance and no plays, or -0.948 + -0.064.

[6] Multiplying already negative values by 5 seemed excessive.

[7] The square root of a value greater than 0 and less than 1 is larger, while one cannot calculate a square root for values less than 0.

[8] #1 = 3, #2-6 = 2

[9] Weighted 1/43, 1/43, 26/43, 14/43, 36/43, 19/43 and 21.5/43, respectively

[10] I also computed a final Album Score in which I did not use the square root of TS>1. The two score are correlated a near-perfect 0.95. Meanwhile, I also removed four “demos” from each of Loverboy’s Get Lucky and Thomas Dolby’s The Golden Age of Wireless and 13 “An Evening with Sheldon Harnick” tracks from Fiddler On the Roof Original Cast Recording. All three albums moved, appropriately, into my top 200.

[11] I already knew and loved “I Will Follow” and “Gloria,” from 1980 and 1981, respectively.