Only 5 Classic Rock Albums Are Better Than 'Sgt. Pepper's'

If there’s one especially famous Beatles album, it’s probably Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It helped reshape the idea of what an album could achieve, as a piece of art made up purposefully of a collection of songs, and you can feel its influence in so many ways (especially in, but not limited to, the development of the psychedelic rock genre). Is it the best thing ever, though? Almost, perhaps. You can see why it’s beloved, but these classic rock albums might well be slightly better than Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. To keep things a bit more interesting, there won’t be any other Beatles albums here, and for everyone else considered, there’s a limit of one album per artist.

5 'Led Zeppelin IV' (1971)

Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin, as far as their self-titled albums were concerned, arguably saved the best for last, because Led Zeppelin IV is incredible. If you want to get technical, though, it’s an untitled album, unlike the first three truly self-titled albums by Led Zeppelin, but it gets referred to as Led Zeppelin IV because that’s easier than saying nothing. It’s like not knowing what to call Prince, back when he had that symbol instead of a name or something. And it’s a bit like how the 1968 self-titled album by The Beatles often gets referred to as The White Album (doesn’t take a genius to work out where that name came from).

But back to Led Zeppelin IV… it’s just perfect rock, and came at a time when classic rock was especially strong. You're going to notice that this and the other albums mentioned here all came from the 1970s, which was just a very strong decade for rock music, partly because artists who’d been inspired by what The Beatles (and some other bands/singers) had done in the 1960s, and then kept the momentum going. Led Zeppelin IV also has a certain amount of variety on its side, in terms of how it balances some slower – and almost folk rock-style – songs against the more energetic ones. Also, anyone talking about Led Zeppelin IV is obligated to mention that this is the album that contains “Stairway to Heaven,” though there are other tracks here (like the ones that open and close the album, respectively) that are almost just as impressive.

4 'Born to Run' (1975)

Bruce Springsteen

Most of the truly classic of all the classic rock came from Britain, with that whole British Invasion thing that The Beatles were indeed one part of, but you can’t dismiss American classic rock, especially when some of it’s as good as Bruce Springsteen was at his artistic peak. Throughout the 1970s, and then much of the 1980s, too, Springsteen was on a real hot streak. If it didn’t begin with his first album, 1973’s Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., then it definitely began with his second, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, which was released later that same year. And then that hot streak lasted at least until 1984’s Born in the U.S.A., or maybe 1987’s Tunnel of Love.

Closer to the center of all that greatness was Born to Run, which is Springsteen’s best album, and the most Springsteen-y of them all. It’s a perfectly-paced album that’s almost exactly 40 minutes long, and it’s got all the right ups and downs in the right places to feel like a complete experience. Even if the songs didn’t flow, you'd still have a remarkable collection of them anyway, with “Thunder Road,” the title track, and “Jungleland” particularly ranking high among Springsteen’s best-ever tracks, but the fact that all these great songs mesh together so brilliantly is – perhaps obviously – what makes Born to Run a great album. Great songs. Great album in its entirety. Very emotional. Just excellent all-around. He’s called The Boss for a reason.

3 'Red' (1974)

King Crimson

Overall, King Crimson is a fairly underrated band, though they’ve got a dedicated following made up of people who might well scoff at the idea of them being underrated. If you frequent certain parts of the internet, you probably wouldn’t get the impression they were underrated. Anyway, the most famous album of the band’s was In the Court of the Crimson King, because that might well be the most bombastic/theatrical, and it was also the band’s debut album. A few years on from that one, though, there was Red, and Red might well be the actual best King Crimson album.

It’s a little tricky (and maybe even sneaky) to call it classic rock, since the music on Red is more progressive rock, what with there being only five songs making up an album that’s about 40 minutes long, but it was rock released at a time when classic rock was a thing, and Red is an undeniable classic. It deserves a spot here for the closing track “Starless” alone, yet the four songs used to build to that climax are also amazing. Red balances some bold and more experimental sounds and ideas with a certain immediacy, and rock that is easy to appreciate, so long as you don’t mind the songs all being fairly long, on average. It’s an intensely cinematic album, and there’s something about the way it sounds that really feels like it might well be timeless.

2 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars' (1972)

David Bowie

Just as classic rock purists might not love progressive rock making it onto this ranking with the inclusion of Red, so too might some scoff at the idea of putting what’s more or less a glam rock album here. Still, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is more than just glam rock, because it was very Bowie-esque of David Bowie to not make something that neatly fit into just one genre or sub-genre. This album, which is his strongest and most consistent overall, has a quintessential glam rock sound, all the while also having plenty of immediate – and even poppy – rock songs that wouldn’t sound out of place on any radio station known for focusing on popular music of this era.

That could be The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, in a word. “Popular.” But popular without sounding too neat or mindless, and if definable as pop music, it’s almost as good as pop’s ever gotten. If you're only ever able to listen to one David Bowie album, first of all, condolences. That sounds terrible. But second of all, make it The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. You won’t hear everything great that Bowie was capable of within the confines of a single album, yet you'll hear the most by way of greatness by listening to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars from start to finish, all packed into an immense 38 minutes.

1 'The Dark Side of the Moon' (1973)

Pink Floyd

Like all the albums here, The Dark Side of the Moon does contain some incredible songs, without a doubt. Any good-to-great album kind of has to, by default. But The Dark Side of the Moon really stands out, even in this crowd, for how much those songs are elevated by the act of listening to them in this order, and in one sitting. Pink Floyd did a lot in terms of pushing the notion of a concept album forward, and doing so well beyond The Dark Side of the Moon, sure. You had Animals, Wish You Were Here, and (especially) The Wall being very conceptual, and they're also great albums in their own right.

But it’s The Dark Side of the Moon that feels the most ambitious, in terms of being a concept album and an overall piece of art. It’s got a broad range of topics it explores, more or less one-by-one throughout lots of the songs here (“Time,” “Money,” and “Us and Them” are, it has to be admitted, all about the things you'd expect them to be about). Everything does get wrapped up toward the album’s end, though, and there’s also a very purposeful introduction to the album that plays out across its first two or three (shorter) songs. It endures, and there’s a reason it’s considered such an iconic and groundbreaking album. The Dark Side of the Moon genuinely continues to impress in that regard, more than half a century on from its release.