


But I remain convinced that canon building and the listing of names remains essential business even with nearly everything available at our fingertips, the paralysis of choice is real, and if you don’t know what you’re looking for, how will you ever find it?Ī few notes: the list below is copied exactly as it was printed, no corrections.

That said, the concentration on CDs feels rather quaint after living through MP3s, Peer to Peer networks, iTunes, and now streaming services, each fundamentally changing the way we collect music. I find this sense of inclusion refreshing when compared to the competition (Rolling Stone, cough). Purists scoff (you can Google it), but the ragtag character of the thing beautifully encapsulates the magazine’s larger aesthetic: great art can be from anywhere, even in the most unlikely places, and sometimes a wide net is preferable to a refined canon.
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In his Editor’s Letter, Andy Pemberton jokes how he “decided to release the review dwarves from their cages and send them on a mission to find the 500 best CDs the world has ever heard.” That, plus a list of contributors, is about all we get.Īnd yet, Pemberton is careful to write “CDs” rather than “albums” in the above passage: while best-ofs are often included in lists such as this, there’s also Big Star and Beach Boys two-fers, and several multi-artist compilations and box sets. There is very little context provided for the list in the April 2003 issue just album covers and blurbs, with no overarching theme or explanation. They also published my favorite of that most contentious thing, a list of the greatest albums ever made. At its peak, in the early 21st century, it was my favorite music magazine. Among its specialties was A+ music writing (including many who wrote for Spin in the ’90s), risque covers, laffs and lists. In case it’s been lost to history, Blender was a music magazine published under the Maxim brand from 1994-2009.
