My Top Twenty Favorite Albums Ever (2020 Version)

A truth about me is that my brain is not wired in a way to remember dates easily. Ask me what year most any album came out, and I won't be able to tell you. Not only that, but I seldom remember what year major life events happened. I simply never trained myself to add that detail to every memory, so time is able to slip through my fingers, because often I miss the signals that we are once again at the same point in our cosmic journey.

That is a preface for an occasion that isn't temporal, but is still important. This post is the 1,000th on our humble little site, and is something I didn't see coming until the number was staring me in the face. I put my head down and go about writing without thinking much about the bigger picture, and I hadn't realized we had accomplished so much. In all honesty, I should have stretched things (and myself) out more, but we're here.

To mark the occasion, I am presenting an updated list of my twenty favorite albums of all time. It has been a few years since the last time I posted such a list, and it seems far more appropriate than a review of some album I will soon forget.

Here we go:

20. Alyson Avenue - Presence Of Mind (Previous Rank: N/A)

My favorite album in the melodic/AOR realm, easily. Anette Olzon has gotten far more attention for what came later, but this is the best album she's been on. She would become a more polished vocalist, but her tone was always there, and this album is chock full of bright, cheesy, infectious melodies. It's a smile put on record.

19. Weezer - Weezer (The Green Album) (Previous Rank: N/A)

What I love about this album is precisely that it is Rivers Cuomo completely divorcing himself from his music. He can write stupidly good pop songs, but he is a weird, disturbing, highly questionable human being. Without having to hear any of his personality in the lyrics, Weezer is at their best. There has never been a more tightly written record.

18. Edguy - Tinnitus Sanctus (Previous Rank: 19)

This album is a disappointment to most fans, but is adored by me. Edguy blended their power metal bombast with darker, more modern metal guitars, and the result is an album that eschews any hint of the 'flower metal' insult. Even a song about God talking with an aardvark sounds menacing. It's the perfect amount of darkness for metal.

17. Graveyard - Hisingen Blues (Previous Rank: N/A)

If I'm asked for the best band of the last fifteen or so years, only two names come to mind. One of them is Graveyard, and this record is the best distillation of who they are. I don't get most classic rock, but I get Graveyard, even though they are a modern version of it. It's pure, organic, and so much more than the sum of its parts.

16. Black Sabbath - Heaven & Hell (Previous Rank: 10)

The only Black Sabbath I care about is the Dio era, and it's not even a question which album to pick. The only real question is whether this is the best album Dio ever appeared on. Obviously, I'm saying it is, but that's not a runaway decision. Rainbow's "Long Live Rock N Roll" puts up a strong fight. For it's time, "Heaven & Hell" was the best metal album in existence.

15. Elton John - Peachtree Road (Previous Rank: N/A)

I have changed my mind. I used to pick "The Captain & The Kid", but the more I listen, the more "Peachtree Road" has higher highs. Either way, this era of Elton John is my favorite. If I am an old soul at heart, liking this is an illustration of just that. The facade isn't there, but the songs are. Just beautiful.

14. Bob Catley - Immortal (Previous Rank: 13)

Half the appeal to this album is Bob's voice, which is one of those wondrous sounds that is unique to him. Unfortunately, most of his career has been spent singing songs I don't particularly care for, so when this album came along and gave him a set of splendid melodic metal, I was overjoyed. I have been ever since.

13. Bloodbound - Tabula Rasa (Previous Rank: 12)

When I first heard this album, I thought it's blend of Soilwork-esque guitars and power metal vocals was the future of the genre. Well, it took a long time to get there, but we might have. This still sounds cutting-edge, and is still a fantastic blend of rhythmic guitar chunks and soaring vocal hooks. Modern power metal started here, and has never eclipsed this album.

12. Graham Colton Band - Drive (Previous Rank: N/A)

I ran across Graham Colton in the file-sharing days, when one of his songs was mis-labeled as my favorite band. It was fortuitous, as when he and his band released an album, it was everything I could have wanted. At least, I came to realize that down the line. It's an album that has been growing on me all these years, and every time I listen to it, I wonder how I didn't hear it this way the first time.

11. Matchbox 20 - Yourself Or Someone Like You (Previous Rank: N/A)

I used to say "Mad Season" was the better album, and in all honesty it probably is, but there's something to be said for which album makes you listen. That is still this one, which despite being as blatantly late-90s as possible, continues to resonate with me. I played it as a teenager so much I actually wore out the CD, and I still find myself singing every time one of the songs comes on.

10. Avantasia - The Metal Opera Pt II (Previous Rank: 8)

I have never come up with a reason why this album, and not any of the myriad other similar power metal albums, is the one that stands out most to me. It simply does, as the blend of power metal and Meat Loaf hits at many of the things I love so much about music. Perhaps inexplicable, but for me undeniable.

9. Bruce Dickinson - The Chemical Wedding (Previous Rank: 7)

I like Iron Maiden too, but Bruce's crowning achievement is this solo album, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Using the poetry of William Blake as a backdrop, and bass strings on the guitars to add even more heaviness, this album is an epic, intellectual examination of what metal can be. It's stirring, rousing, and the sort of album that makes me stand back and applaud something I could never do.

8. Dilana - InsideOut (Previous Rank: N/A)

I'll say more a few slots later, but this album was my introduction to my favorite voice (on record, that is), and a moment in time I will never forget. I could hardly believe what I heard that first time, and I feel the same way today. It's a wild ride of influences, anchored by that voice. "Dirty Little Secret" is heart-breaking, while "Falling Apart" has since usurped the throne as my favorite song of all time. Where would I be without this one?

7. Graveyard - Lights Out (Previous Rank: 14)

I mentioned classic rock the first time Graveyard appeared on this list, and let me go further. "Lights Out" is an album that is a time machine, not because it brings the sound of the 70s to my ears, but because it allows me to experience what fans back then felt as the classic albums were coming out. This record is timeless, and in it I hear the threads of history being tied together, anchoring me to a past I would otherwise not be firmly moored to. It's the best rock album of the last decade.

6. Tonic - Head On Straight (Previous Rank: N/A)

I realized recently I listen to this album constantly, and not my previous pick for the second best Tonic album ("Sugar"). While this album is the outlier of their short catalog, that's exactly why I love it so much. The tone is different, even if the songs aren't. This album is Tonic at their most 'rock', and Emerson's voice and melodies atop heavier guitars is something I have never gotten tired of.

5. Jimmy Eat World - Futures (Previous Rank: 11)

When I was younger, "Pinkerton" by Weezer was one of our cultural touchstones. I have written much about the shame I feel in that, but thankfully it has been replaced by "Futures", which somehow continues to grow in my esteem. It is a dark album of bitterness and longing, a statement of nerdy awkwardness, and much more the album I would use to define my era, even if it technically is a few years too late. Call this the remake that is better than the original, in every way. Sadly, I seem to be one of the very few, the band included, who feel as such.

4. Dilana - Beautiful Monster (Previous Rank: 4)

I wrote an entire novel fictionalizing my belief I don't feel things the way most people do. This album, at least for forty minutes, proved me wrong. In Dilana's voice and songs I could feel her soul pouring through, and something about her resonates at the same frequency as my own. My reaction is visceral, wrenching, and belonging solely to this album. She taught me something about myself with these songs, and there isn't much greater than that.

3. The Wallflowers - (Breach) (Previous Rank: 3)

I love "Bringing Down The Horse" like everyone else, but that isn't the album that means the most to me. This one not only has a bigger, bolder sound to it, but as I have written about before, it also taught me about the intersection of music and poetry. Jakob Dylan's lyrics are as much at the forefront as the songs themselves, and he wrote on this album imagery that has stuck with me now for two decades. Older listeners have their relationship with his father, but this is my Dylan.

2. Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell II (Previous Rank: 2)

I still have the cassette tape sitting on the back of a shelf somewhere, the very first album I ever owned. Jim Steinman was my first music teacher, and everything people perceive as terrible about my taste derives from that fact. I was an impressionable child, and the drama and humor of Jim Steinman wrote the first words on my blank slate. Even today, the outlines of the jigsaw pieces fit perfectly in me. I know I'm in the minority picking the sequel, but I'm not apologizing for that.

1. Tonic - Lemon Parade (Previous Rank: 1)

This has been my favorite album since it overtook the previous entrant, and has kept that spot even as "If You Can Only See" was overtaken as my favorite song. So why do I love this album so much? There are the songs of course, which are fantastic, and rather interesting as well. There are sly details and some unusual voicings that make it sound unique to everything else coming out of the mid 90s, even if the production was the typical post-grunge dirt. But beyond all of that, "Lemon Parade" is the album that made me want to become a musician and songwriter. This record is the reason I picked up a guitar and a pen, it's responsible for me thinking of music as more than a diversion. It's hard to find a deeper connection than that.