So here’s the thing. If you were making a list of the best 500 albums of all time, would you really include Foo Fighters? How about MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular? I mean really? Come on. Seriously?

How about Nirvana’s “Bleach”? I’m a huge Nirvana fans. But if you’re picking 500 albums and you’ve got albums by James Brown and the Rolling Stones and Radiohead and Bob Dylan and Miles Davis and John Coltrane and Billie Holiday and Prince and Johnny Cash and Sleater-Kinney and Tom Waits and the Beach Boys and Woody Guthrie and Joanna Newsom and Bob Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago, and on and on, would you really include include “Bleach”? Or two Kings of Leon albums?

Or how about Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not as the 20th best of all time.

Oh well.

Here’s the Top 20:

1. The Smiths – The Queen Is Dead
2. The Beatles – Revolver
3. David Bowie – Hunky Dory
4. The Strokes – Is This It
5. The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground & Nico
6. Pulp – Different Class
7. The Stone Roses – The Stone Roses
8. Pixies – Doolittle
9. The Beatles – The Beatles
10. Oasis – Definitely Maybe
11. Nirvana – Nevermind
12. Patti Smith – Horses
13. Arcade Fire – Funeral
14. David Bowie – Low
15. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
16. Joy Division – Closer
17. Public Enemy – It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
18. My Bloody Valentine – Loveless
19. Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
20. Radiohead – OK Computer

Check the rest here.

Thanks, Stereogum.