List and You Shall Hear VII: The 75 Greatest Albums Really Made By Women

Here, at long last, is my VII^th and final post in my series on NPR's 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women and their quite contrasting Reader's Poll of the same.

As I said in post VI, in no way is this list any more definitive that the original one. But what's "definitive"? Nothing, because great new albums will continue to be released, and old ones will be re-evaluated. But at least I can say that I have made an effort to be rigorous in my selection criteria, thorough in my effort to familiarize myself with a lot of music, and as objective as possible given the fact that "taste" is not always possible to get away from.

One reason I undertook this exercise is that I find all the existing lists of albums by women – the two from NPR, the Rolling Stone list, and others I've mentioned in previous posts – lack the quality of what I would call hard listening: actually evaluating the musical quality of each album track by track, and placing what is there in a meaningful musical, social and historical context. Doing so leads to the exclusion of pretty much all lightweight pop, whose presence diminishes the other lists, since that is never of any real aesthetic or social consequence and has the staying power of roughly the adolescent years of one generation.

I have all but placed each artist's albums in a giant spreadsheet in which each song is given points for musical quality, originality, and other virtues, and the results compared horizontally and vertically. That would be a bit too artificial, but it is a kind of ideal to keep in mind so as to avoid overly subjective evaluations. For example, comparing Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels On a Gravel Road track by track with her Sweet Old World, it quickly becomes clear that "Sweet Old World" and "Sidewalks of the City" are each better than any track on Car Wheels, and few if any tracks on the latter are superior to the other tracks on Sweet Old World. Compare this method of compiling the list with subjective attitudes like, "It took her six years to make this album and she worked so hard at the lyrics and it's pretty good after all so it must be a masterpiece". I feel like this, or some similarly weak reasoning, underlies a lot of the popular choices for other lists.

I'm a guy (straight, cis, white...) evaluating music made by women. Although most of what I like best is also liked pretty well by lots of women, I can hardly pretend to be listening to songs from the perspective of a woman. I'm listening to the music, first and foremost, which has no gender, and secondly to the general quality of the lyrics. If certain albums speak directly to women in a kind of wink-wink nod-nod "we're all girls here" voice then that's as may be. I should think it is a kind of defect, and at any rate not a virtue, of a recording if it is incapable of being fully appreciated by half the human race due to either their genitalia or gender identity. It hardly needs saying that male rockers from The Beatles to Coldplay have fanatical female followings, so whatever may be particularly male about their music does not exclude appreciation by women. So I could not accept the argument that some album or other is great because it speaks to women in a way that it cannot to men.

Two examples: Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville, and Beyonce's Lemonade. Neither one blows me away musically, but they both apparently have a lot of buy-in from the fairer sex; at least, they are given luminous positions in both the NPR Pros and Readers lists. Why? Are my musical ears are so different from those of women? Or is it, rather, that what they hear in albums like these is some sort of statement? As shots over the bow in the age-old war of the sexes, these statements are at best mildly interesting. To me, the complaints of women about the defects of male behavior are on the same level as the complaints of men about the behavior of women. (I am talking about the behavior of ordinary people in ordinary relationships, not about violent physical abuse.) But it is hard to think of an album by a male songwriter that consists solely in efforts to detail their issues with a woman or women. One can think of individual songs: "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright", "I Can See For Miles", "Lying Eyes", "Your Time Is Gonna Come", etc. But it is not that easy to come up with such examples, and much harder to think of entire albums of this nature. If certain female songwriters get inspired by indulging their views of men's emotional shortcomings, fine, but an album of songs like Alanis Morisette's "You Oughta Know" is justified only if the emotional wringing-out is the inspiration for really great songwriting. Chain-linked complaints about guys, and relationships with them, is really not a virtue in itself, whether it goes by the name "honesty" or whatever. Whether it's hip-hop soul like Beyoncé's, stripped-down post-punk like Liz Phair's, or formulaic pop like Taylor Swift's, it does not make great a great album unless there is something really exciting going on musically.

*****

Considering and critiquing the greatest albums made by women has been an interesting project that has compelled me to listen to hundreds of albums by female songwriters and performers (usually multiple times). I probably would never have listened to a great many of them without this project in mind. But time-consuming as it was, and in spite of the fact that there are a great many female artists I still have not checked out, the size of the pool of likely contenders for a list like this made this a manageable project.

That gives me pause. Consider a differently gendered project: to find the greatest albums "made by men". Yikes. It may be difficult to face up to, but that list in many ways overtakes and surpasses the women's album list I offer below before it even begins to get off the ground. Consider, for example, a list of near-perfect albums made by men. Applying roughly the same rules I will apply to the selection of women's albums (thus, for example, leaving out Jefferson Airplane and all other groups in which women played prominent roles; no compilations, live albums, etc.) I might start like this:

The Beatles (British releases only): With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night, Help, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles, Abbey Road (9) (I am being rather restrained here)

Bob Dylan: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks, Desire (5) (I am being rather restrained here)

Elton John: Elton John, Tumbleweed Connection, Madman Across the Water, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (5)

Led Zeppelin: I, II, IV, Presence, In Through the Out Door (5)

David Bowie: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, Heroes (2) (I am being extremely restrained here)

Yes: Time and a Word, The Yes Album, Fragile, Close to the Edge, Going for the One (5)

That's 31 albums so far, including three double albums. with hardly a mediocre track; maybe some fun and games here and there, but basically set after set of terrific songs from only six artists. To continue:

Jimi Hendrix: Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love, Electric Ladyland (3)

Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, The Wall (3)

King Crimson: In the Court of the Crimson King, Starless and Bible Black (2)

Jethro Tull: Aqualung, War Child, Minstrel in the Gallery (3)

Genesis: Selling England By the Pound, Trick of the Tail, Wind and Wuthering (3)

Paul McCartney: Ram, Band on the Run (2)

The Rolling Stones: Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Some Girls (3)

The Who: Tommy, Quadrophenia, Who's Next? (2)

The Grateful Dead: American Beauty, Workingman's Dead, Blues for Allah (3)

Traffic: John Barleycorn Must Die, The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys (2)

The Moody Blues: On the Threshold of a Dream, A Question of Balance, Every Good Boy Deserves Favor (3)

Steely Dan: Countdown to Ecstasy, The Royal Scam, Aja (3)

The Band: The Band, Music From Big Pink (2)

Crosby, Stills and Nash (and Young): Crosby Stills and Nash, Déja Vu (2)

Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run, Born in the USA (2)

Another 39 brilliant albums, by artists that have more than one such effort; we are up to 70 albums altogether. Adding a few one-off favorites:

Queen: Sheer Heart Attack

Grand Funk Railroad: Closer to Home

Blue Oyster Cult: Blue Oyster Cult

Blood Sweat and Tears: Child Is Father to the Man

10cc: The Original Soundtrack

We now have 75 albums, or half of a list of 150 greatest albums by men, and I have not even gone past the mid-1970's: no Tom Petty or John Mellankamp here, no punk or New Wave groups, no 1990's Seattle grudge, no modern bands like Radiohead, Wilco, Oasis, Death Cab For Cutie or Weezer. I have not listed a single R&B album (surely Marvin Gaye's What's Going On? would be an easy pick) much less any hip-hop artists. Though I dug deeply into the singer-songwriter genre for women's music I have ignored almost everyone except Dylan in the male list. There are several country artists in the list by women (it's an area where prominent female artists abound) while I have not mentioned a single album by anyone like Merle Haggard, George Jones or Dwight Yoakum. And I have reached for relatively obscure female artists like Fanny, but ignored my favorite lesser known male artists, like Nektar. In short, I am merely skimming the surface of rock by men, yet not one of of these 75 albums is a stretch; indeed each of them contains, to my taste, a nearly flawless (and in some cases innovative) set of songs. Whereas I think the list of the 75 greatest albums by women, below, begins to fall off in quality roughly half way through; while the two NPR lists seem to me of inconsistent quality throughout.

Another comparison: in the Women's Department I find relatively few artists who released more than one or two consistently brilliant albums in their careers, at least given what strikes me as "brilliant". Joni Mitchell, Siouxsie Sioux, Suzanne Vega and Joan Armatrading have done it; on any particular day I might add Laura Nyro, Janis Ian, Tori Amos, Aretha Franklin, Courtney Love or Sheryl Crow. (Some would insist that Patti Smith and Kate Bush should be on that short list, but I have explained before, and again below, my issues with their albums.) There are a lot of one-offs on the list below, flashes of brilliance not followed up by anything of similar quality.

So what does all this mean? I have already answered this to some extent in my previous posts: women have largely shied away, or been diverted from, many of the kinds of music that have defined rock from the beginning. Not that they could not play it, as has been amply demonstrated by women from Suzi Quatro and Fanny to Melissa Ethridge and Lez Zeppelin. Outright sexism, which has tended to shunt women into vocal groups and surround them with male producers and engineers, is another factor. The toxic atmosphere that #MeToo is now confronting throughout the entertainmet industry is another. There may be several more. The unfortunate result is that the list of really first rate albums primarily made by women is nowhere near as deep as the list of those primarly made by men. All the more outstanding,then, is the accomplishment of women like Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Madonna and others who managed to have a major impact on popular music beyond their own record sales, in spite of the odds. In any case, to return to my original point, the very fact that the list of candidate albums is narrow made this exercise possible.

One more thing must be said though. Heading out in new directions is hardly something men have failed to do - a very short list might include Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Fripp, David Bowie, Jimmy Page, Marvin Gaye, Barry White, Syd Barrett, Peter Gabriel, Sid Vicious, Kurt Cobain, Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar. But women seem to have made a point of not sticking by the rules, and their smaller numbers belie their influence: Aretha Franklin, Grace Slick, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Joan Armatrading, Madonna, Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Siouxsie Sioux, Laurie Anderson, Suzanne Vega, Patti Smith, PJ Harvey, Julia Holter and Janelle Monae, among many others, were unafraid to cut new trails for themselves, undeterred by the potential for being written off as outliers. Nyro, Mitchell, Bush and Amos, for example, not only created a kind of keyboard-driven artrock song genre, but each (except Nyro, the precocious teen who started it all) built on their predecessors in ways that don't owe much, from what I can tell, to more mainstream, and male, pop keyboard styles. Proportionately to men, women seem to have had less compunction about redefining genres rather than letting the music business redefine them. This has inestimable cultural and musical value, beyond merely making outstanding albums. Experimentation only rarely results in widely accessible music; but it expands the boundaries of what is possible and prevents the stagnation of pop forms.

*****

Here, then, are the ground rules for my selection of the greatest albums by women:

• The album has to be substantially created by women, with women doing most of the performing, or at least have clear influence and authority over the performances, and either writing most of the material or at least arranging and producing it, such that the album as a whole is clearly their creative product.
• I include rock, folk, some rap, soul, country and various hybrids of those forms. Classical, jazz, blues, Broadway, and all kinds of avant-garde or clearly experimental music are excluded because they are incommensurable with these other genres. So-called "world music" is not a kind of music but many kinds, and they need to be considered differently from Western popular music.
• I make no attempt to be representative of female artists in general, however popular or important they may be; this is a list of great albums, and that's all. I acknowledge a handful (or less) of cases where I have stretched to include an album whose merits I am not 100% convinced of because I could not see leaving the artist off the list, but there are absolutely no cases where mere popularity or album sales have motivated me to put an album on the list.
•  An album is originally conceived as such: I don't include singles compilations, greatest hits, most live albums, retrospectives, etc. The songs had to be released as an album relatively close to the time they were recorded (though not necessarily close to the time they were written).
• I don't begin at any arbitrary year, as long as the rest of these criteria are met. But I have cut off the list at 2015. The insistence of both the NPR Pros and Readers on including albums that have barely hit the stands (er... streaming services) shows very poor judgment, as if it is just not possible that a few years' hindsight might relegate Lemonade to some lesser position than that of the 6^th greatest album ever made by a woman. I was tempted to make the cutoff 2010, but relaxed it a bit to allow in a couple of the current decade's most outstanding recordings.
• In rating an album, we consider first and foremost its creator's total creative contribution. This means that, with a few notable exceptions, women who write their own music are going to dominate the list. Other important considerations are instrumental as well as vocal performance, production control and lyrical originality.
• It's a list of albums, not videos. I'm sufficiently impressed by the content of contemporary rock videos, but evaluating them is a separate exercise from evaluating the content of albums. This is all the more important because successful artists can pour big bucks into the creation of a high-end, artsy, technically polished, brand-defining video for every song on a new album, while more obscure artists are lucky to produce one or two decent videos even if their album is of substantially higher quality. (The contemporary emphasis on evaluating music by its video accompaniment is quite backwards, aesthetically; the song came first, it's not a soundtrack, and its YouTube companion is more in the nature of an ad than an integral part of the musical work.)

Playing by these rules, bands like Jefferson Airplane and Sonic Youth are not going to end up on the list, nor even The B-52's or Blondie; their albums are not "made by women". Indeed, against my initial inclinations, I have even excluded Pat Benatar, due to the central importance of Neil Giraldo's contributions on virtually all of her albums. We will have no Pauline Oliveros, Diamanda Galas or Meredith Monk; this kind of music cannot be evaluated on a continuum with Joni Mitchell and the like. Billie, Nina, Lena, Ella, Sarah, Phoebe – you're out, jazz and blues are your main idiom, even if you managed to crash the pop charts now and then. (But trust me, you would top my list in those departments.)

Apologies to Barbara Streisand, Shirley Bassey and other outstanding song interpreters – there are a few outstanding albums of mainly cover material here, but mostly it's original songwriting. Moreover, I am staying away from show music and other forms of popular music that have little to do with rock, or with the singer-songwriter space that bridges rock and folk music.

Awful of me, I know, to slide in relatively unknown people while ignoring too-well-known people like Taylor and Britney and Adele, who have sold at least 20 million times the number of albums as some of the artists on the list, but this is about quality, not sales. I am willing to accept responsibility for my nonconformist tastes. If I have included two albums by Loreena McKennitt while ignoring her far more famous compatriot Shania Twain I'm just letting my gut reactions rule, and overriding, with all due respect, the considered judgment of critics as well as the masses who vote with their feet (or did when there were such things as record stores).

Also, I may have listed half a dozen Joni Mitchell albums and more than one by other artists, leaving no room for many talented songwriters who just don't have better albums than the best of those outstanding female recording artists. (The NPR Readers' Poll was similar, in this respect, though my list was largely formed before that poll was published.) Once again, it's a list of the greatest albums, not the greatest artists. There may be albums here by artists who are not "great" (whatever their self-penned Wikipedia page suggests) but have an outstanding recording, while some great ones who just never managed to put together an entire album that reflects their illustrious status are missing.

I have been a lot less generous to neo-soul and hip hop than NPR was. Sade has been promoted and Queen Latifah stays; I have already given my opinion on the other NPR selections so I will say no more about why they are not here. However, speaking specifically of music by black female artists, the absence of Minnie RIperton's Perfect Angel and Joan Armatrading's best albums from the NPR list seems to me wrong on account of taste, original musicianship, songwriting and importance; these oversights have been corrected here. Racial categories are a bit absurd, anyway. I'm not sure if Linda Perry identifies as a "black" artist, but "white" she is not; her brilliant album with 4 Non-Blondes is duly recognized below. I have added Janelle Monae thanks to being alerted to her work by the Readers' Poll. (Strangely enough I knew her as an actress from Moonlight and the "Autofac" episode of Phillip K. Dick's Electric Dreams on Netflix, and did not even know she was a musician.) If the list were to continue, Erykah Badu, Aaliyah, Meshell Ndegeocello, Mary J. Blige, Macy Gray and perhaps other neo-soul artists might well be represented; the fact that these artists don't rank for me where they do on the NPR list doesn't mean I don't like or respect their work.

A number of other perverse oversights of the original NPR list have been corrected: Suzanne Vega, Janis Ian, Judy Collins, Amy Lee (Evanescence), Neko Case (well represented on the Reader's Poll), Bette Midler, Mary Chapin Carpenter (another Readers' pick), Carrie Underwood, Nanci Griffith, Enya and Michelle Shocked are all on the list, while Joni Mitchell and Tori Amos are represented by more and different albums. Some under-the-radar choices like Fanny remain, and a few are added: Pat Humphries, a folk musician whose album Same Rain contains some of the finest songwriting I know; and Lili Haydn, a violinist who has not only performed with many of the most famous popular musicians but released several little-noted but excellent albums.

So how do I have the gall (you want to ask) to create a list of these albums when I previously said, or implied, that lists were evil? Actually, I didn't say that – what I said was that they shouldn't be a ranking, because the rankings are arbitrary. So I have put these albums down in roughly the order they came to me as I was trying to figure out how the list would go if I had to do it myself. Obviously the first few are choices I would stand by as belonging at the top of any ranking – it's not a coincidence that they came to me first. I'm also pretty sure that where the same artist is represented by several albums, they are in the right order (a weakness of the other lists, to me). And the first half of the list is clearly stronger than the second half. But other than that, you could juggle the order here randomly and I would probably not object to most of the rankings. So much for lists: they would be better if they were consciously random. But that would not satisfy the list lust of the Internet's denizens.(Don't be surprised to see this list end up on Spotify some time soon.)

*****

Here, at last, is the list:

1. The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975) – Joni Mitchell

2. Diamond Life (1984 U.K./1985 – U.S) – Sade

----------------------

Thus far I am absolutely certain of my rankings! These two albums were like musical lightning bolts: after one hearing, and increasingly with every subsequent hearing, they each sent an electric thrill down my spine – sounds I had never heard before, new ideas, brilliantly worked out; lyrics that haunted yet impressed as poetry. Each of them is like a world you want to keep going back to, just to see if it is really as good as you thought it was. And it is, every time. Makes no difference that Sade's first album stands head and shoulders above her others, while Joni has a slew of great disks with this one as a kind of apotheosis. No questions in my mind here. Things get dicier when I try to proceed.

3. Pearl (1971) – Janis Joplin

Once again, regarding Wesley Morris's idiosyncratic view that this is "just not a great album", my answer is: either side by itself is a great album. The NPR Pros and Readers seem to agree. The only thing that weakens its claim to this high a rank is that she didn't write most of the songs. Be that as it may, there is no clearer example of a woman having artistic control over an album – she formed the band, picked the songs, and did all the singing. Without this album her legacy would be half what it is. This was her final and greatest offering and it is a fitting monument to the singing phenomenon that was Janis.

4. Eli and the Thirteenth Confession (1968) – Laura Nyro

NPR's choice of New York Tendaberry is a typical example of their trying to walk in lockstep either with critical consensus or album sales. This may account for Nyro's ridiculous ranking at #82, behind dozens of less notable albums and artists. While Tendaberry is in some ways the pinnacle of Nyro's freewheeling style with melody, rhythm and tempo, it is too dissolute to be "great" as an album - the songs stop and start, wander around, return briefly only to fly off in new directions. I've owned it for decades and played it many times and I can still barely get a grip on it. Christmas and the Beads of Sweat is considerably better in my opinion. But Eli has long been recognized as a masterpiece, even if Tendaberry gets top billing with most critics. In a word, Eli changed the face of popular music. Released two years before Ladies of the Canyon, the first album on which Joni Mitchell turned (in part) to keyboard-based compositions, Eli is the first stop on a road that female composers from Joni to Patti Smith, Rickie Lee Jones, Kate Bush and Tori Amos, among others, have gone down - to say nothing of male musicians, including Elton John, who was a big Nyro fan. The melodic, rhythmic and stylistic freedom she introduced was a model for a whole new direction in music, and here it is brilliantly incorporated into songs that sport so much inherent musical interest that the seemingly impromptu vocal leaps and rhythmic aberrations only make them more appealing. Aside from that, this is perhaps the first true jazzrock album - unless that honor belongs to Blood, Sweat and Tears' Child Is Father to the Man, released a few weeks earlier, the first effort by a group that would eventually make some of Nyro's songs famous. All in all, one of the greatest and most important albums ever made - #4 here, 78 places higher than NPR has Tendaberry.

5. Tapestry (1971) – Carole King

If ever an album needed no comment, this would be it. But I will have a few comments below. No argument that this is a milestone and one of the most consistent pieces of songwriting in pop history. It also dominated the airwaves during a brief period in my life when I was locked in a darkroom for hours at a time with only a radio for entertainment. Alison Steele ("the nightbird") and Carole King might have been my girlfriends, as they were the female voices I heard the most in that space.

6. Abnormally Attracted to Sin (2009) – Tori Amos

Please excuse me while I emit unpleasant eruptions in the general direction of the clowns who dismissed this album as too long, too incoherent, too self-indulgent, or whatever their tired and tiresome complaints. Open your ears to pure songwriting genius - there are thousands of songwriters whose entire output does not contain a cut the equal of "Give" or the title song. Get a life, critics. Or better headphones. The album is like some kind of aural heaven. I respect the more traditional Tori Amos pick of Little Earthquakes, but this was a big earthquake for me, a master class in how to do contemporary popular music in an edgy, sophisticated way. That she performs these pieces alone on stage, surrounded by keyboards, before large, enthralled audiences helps make her one of the most amazing personalities in the history of popular music. But the album is a deserted island disk for me, one that my life would not be complete without.

7. Learning to Crawl (1984) – The Pretenders

While The Pretenders' first album was a great debut with a memorable hit single penned by Chrissie Hynde, Learning to Crawl just blew the roof off, and propelled Hynde to the status of leading woman in rock. Deborah Harry had shared leadership and songwriting credits in Blondie with Chris Stein; Pat Benatar had a lesser role in her own sound than Neil Giraldo did; and even Suzi Quatro and Joan Jett were heavily indebted to other producers and songwriters. Chrissie was her own woman, The Pretenders her own band. She slam-dunked "Back on the Chain Gang" and "My City Was Gone" into the pop charts before Learning to Crawl was recorded, and then, with a somewhat different band, laid down the rest of the album. It is unfortunate that over the course of a long career, one band member after another was either fired or quit; in spite of the fact that she managed, like Siouxsie Sioux, to turn out several more albums and singles and hold her sound together, she never again reached a peak like this. I've mentioned above that the history of women's popular music is littered with shooting stars, there for a moment and quickly gone, at least in terms of top-notch albums. The Pretenders certainly fit that picture.

----------------------

So far I'm still pretty sure about these choices; they share the qualities of greatness with the first two, but questions do arise. Janis' contributions to Pearl include very little songwriting and no instrumental performance; as earth-shaking as her vocals are, as great as the material she chose happens to be, does this compromise its placement near the top of the list? This raises a philosophical question about the artistry of performance compared with composition, and I don't want to try to solve that knotty problem here. On the other hand Carole King's songwriting on Tapestry is greatness itself, but her singing and keyboard playing are just adequate to the task of bringing it off. Hard to come to terms with, given the album's iconic status, but it's true – she was neither a great vocalist nor a particularly accomplished rock pianist. With Tori Amos, my question is whether this is even her best album, although it usually comes out on top when I consider them. All of her albums have some material that moves me more than the rest, making them difficult to assess as albums. For example, I mentioned in a previous post that Boys For Pele has four of my favorite Tori songs, but the rest of the material falls off more sharply than my least favorite songs on many of her other albums. Considerations like this make ranking very difficult and ultimately pretty arbitrary.

8. I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967) – Aretha Franklin

I hate to do this, but I'm going to say it (after which I will probably be drawn and quartered on account of musical taste and abuse of language): I selected this one not mainly out of love, but out of... respect. And I think that's all she's asking for, just a little bit. So everything's good. But still... while the historic status of "Respect", not to mention the title song and "Do Right Woman", almost demands that this album go somewhere in the list, I am not sure I hear an enormous difference between this and quite a few other albums of hers: Lady Soul, Spirit in the Dark, Young, Gifted and Black and perhaps others are on about the same level, and this is to say nothing of her numerous early albums, live albums, jazz albums, and more. Yet, as with Janis Joplin, Whitney Houston and others, I feel less inclined to honor a great singer with a backup band and a bunch of covers by adding several of their albums to the list than I do with great singer-songwriters and band leaders who write most of their own material. The total creative expression is what counts for me, and terrific vocals are only one part of it. So, while I understand the inclination of both the NPR Pros and Readers to place two or three of Aretha's albums on their lists, I am going to settle for the one that really announced her as a major musical force and leave it at that.

9. Joan Armatrading (1976) – Joan Armatrading

Number One on the list of artists whose albums were absurdly omitted by both NPR's Pros and Readers. Sorry Joan, but apparently some of my compatriots have very selective vision when they look across the ocean. In any case, this first example of unconscionable historical injustice is hereby corrected. This, her third effort, is truly a great album. Get this: according to the album's Wikipedia page, Glyn Johns, the producer and/or engineer of some of the most famous albums by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Who, Led Zeppelin and others, "said that it was the best album he'd ever been associated with"! I do wonder what he meant by "best", but regardless, it testifies to the power of this disk. Any list of women's music without it is seriously suspect.

10. Solitude Standing (1987) – Suzanne Vega

Number Two on the list of "150 Most Unaccountable Oversights in Listmaking". And maybe more ridiculous than Number One, if only because Vega is so well known, and no oceans, or even bridges, separate her from the New York cultural elite who came up with the first NPR list. Here, though, I admit to uncertainty of a sort: the album is brilliant, and has some of her best material; but as with Tori Amos, I am forever going back and forth about which Vega albums I like best. In fact, I am sometimes inclined to think that she made small but consistent improvements with almost every new album she released, right through Tales From the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles. Each one has considerable merit; lacking a clear criterion by which to select one over the others I start with the one that more or less kicked off her sound and career and made her the Next Big Thing on the singer-songwriter front.

11. Clouds (1969) – Joni Mitchell

Said enough about this in my third post in this series... see that.

----------------------

It was hard to even get this far. I mean, isn't it just possible that Clouds is #2 overall, and that Me Myself I is ultimately better that Joan Armatrading's eponymous third disk, or as I just said, that some other Suzanne Vega album is better than Solitude Standing? And what about the status of I Never Loved a Man...? One of several Aretha landmarks, but like Pearl, you have these brilliant vocals but no (or few) songwriting credits. Maybe the first 10, 25 or 50 spots should be allocated to women who wrote their own material as well as performing it? IDK. And my uncertainty only grows as I go on.

12. Between the Lines (1975) – Janis Ian

The Number Three Oversight of both Pros and Readers. Ann Powers & Co. should never be allowed to live down the fact that they included the superficial and minimally talented Britney Spears on their list, as well as numerous other dubious commercial choices, and lots of albums that are far from having been "made by women", while the illustrious Readers dropped in every Taylor Swift album they could think of and even the fourth-rate talent Carly Rae Jepsen... and left off Janis Ian, one of the greatest singer-songwriters ever, who offers penetrating social messages in songs of poetry and deep beauty. This is perhaps Ian's greatest album, but it is only an introduction to a deep collection of original compositions. Some of these songs had a social impact in their time that puts her in the rare company of songwriters like Dylan, Paul Simon and Neil Young.

13. Fanny Hill (1972) – Fanny

Once you finish flogging yourself for having not known about Fanny when they were a happening thing, you settle back and acknowledge that this was one of the greatest moments in rock and roll made by women or men. Before Heart, before Suzi Quattro, before Joan Jett or Pat Benatar, there they were with first rate rock vocals, instrumentals and songwriting, an all-female band. That the Millington sisters happened to be Filipino-Americans only makes it more fascinating how thoroughly they had mastered the rock idiom. David Bowie and George Harrison are said to have been fans of Fanny, who opened concerts for them. The NPR Readers embarrassed themselves by dropping this group after the Pros wisely included them. Please add one Parrot to the fan club list, though he flies, like the owl of Minerva, after the sun has set.

14. The ArchAndroid (2010) – Janelle Monáe

If the NPR Readers goofed on Fanny, they sure got this one right vs. the critics: this is one of the boldest, most innovative and just plain brilliant albums in a long time, a worthy decade-opener. It takes an obvious analogy, comparing racism with the contempt for androids that one recognizes as the backdrop to science fiction films like Blade Runner and A.I. - and works it into an ingenious concept album. It is interestingly postmodern: not only do sci fi memes float freely about, but so do musical styles from spy film scores to Prince to the B-52's to hip hop; yet it does not sound at all dissolute, but rather like a composition with contrasts that manage to cohere. The curmudgeonly Robert Christgau, famous for shamefully panning Joni Mitchell's greatest album (see #1, above, and my previous post on Joni), embarrassed himself once again by declaring this "the most overrated album of the year" and saying "her songwriting is 60^th percentile" (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean). Monáe is in excellent company being dissed by Christgau. The Readers also included her follow-up, The Electric Lady; though I like it too, it does not pack quite the same punch as this one. That said, if two or three of my favorite cuts on that collection had found their way into The ArchAndroid instead, perhaps replacing some of the less stellar tracks, I would be ready to push this up to the top five on this list, it's that brilliant.

15. Fallen (2003) – Evanescence

Insanely influential and a consistent piece of songwriting, the Queen of Goth gets her due after yet another eyebrow-raising oversight on NPR's part, which in this case only follows in the wake of the more general critical oversight that greeted the rise of Evanescence. For the next 10 years or more after Fallen, numerous female pop singers tried to sound like Amy Lee in at least a song or two, as if you hadn't really nailed the contemporary sound until you've knocked off one of the tracks from this set. More than enough time has elapsed to recognize that the initial critical evaluation was seriously flawed: this was a defining moment of millennial rock, one that holds up well 15 years later.

16. Bigger, Better, Faster, More (1993) – 4 Non-Blondes

The track "What's Up?" is one of my favorite singles of the 90's. (I assume it was for the obvious reason that they didn't use the song's actual lyric, "What's going on?", as the title.) Aside from that, this album kicks off with a string of great numbers, including notably "Mr. Spaceman". One of the most brilliant one-offs in the history of rock, Linda Perry's vocals stand out for me as among the greatest vocal debuts. It's unfortunate that she apparently does not hold the album in high esteem, but that doesn't change my opinion of it. Too bad Perry and the band split up after one album. All the more reason to be thankful that this intense mix of rock, soul and New Wave made it to the airwaves.

17. The Mask and the Mirror (1994) – Loreena McKennitt

I'm really not sure why Loreena McKennitt gets so little attention, but my guess is that no one knows exactly how to classify her. Her Wikipedia entry begins by calling her work "world music with Celtic and Middle Eastern themes". That's already complicated enough, but it goes on to mention that she is "sometimes classified as folk music in record stores". Well, maybe in Canada, but in the U.S. – when there were record stores, and when they carried her albums – she was usually found in the Rock bins. To stir the pot even more, the Wikipedia page for The Book of Secrets adds "new age" to the list of genres. Electric guitars and Celtic harps and Middle Eastern drums... what to do with this? Well, a 2010 link says she had sold over 14 million albums by then; I'm sure it's quite a bit more by now. I said I am not including so-called "world music" on this list because it gets too hard to compare so many different musical styles with Western/Northern popular music, but this is Western/Northern popular music – she has two gold and one 2x platinum album in the U.S. and at least seven Canadian Top 20 albums (maybe more; her Wikipedia entries were a bit out of date last time I looked). A great musician with an operatic soprano and serious genius as an arranger. This album seems to me her best; when someone lifted a case of some 20 CD's from me many years ago, it was one of the first ones I replaced. Another one follows below; these are the two I know best, but The Visit, at least, would be another option.

18. Ladies of the Canyon (1970) – Joni Mitchell

It is convenient for the Blue contingent to forget that it was on Ladies that Joni first explored those moody piano arrangements and freewheeling vocal rhythms. Aside from that, it just has more of her greatest songs than Blue. And more memorable songs than most of the 10's of thousands of other albums of original songs ever recorded. Wherefore the general tendency to overlook this masterpiece? I don't know. (It feels a little like the attitude towards Laura Nyro's Eli, as if the mere fact that it has so many of her most popular songs makes critics want to look smart by giving higher marks to one of her more esoteric albums.) If Joni had done nothing but this album she would still be one of the greatest folk-rock songwriters, as it gave us not only "Woodstock" but "The Circle Game" and "Big Yellow Taxi" (one of the precious few contemporary songs that Dylan covered on a recording), as well as other excellent songs. I think critical rankings are out to lunch on this one; it should be high on any list of music made by women or men.

19. Tinderbox (1986) – Siouxsie and the Banshees

When I first began listening to Siouxsie and the Banshees as I pursued my endless responses to the NPR list, it was almost like discovering a female David Bowie; a kind of object lesson in how to play uncompromising rock without foregoing raw musical appeal. The band released a series of excellent albums of which at least The Scream, Juju and Peepshow might also be on this list; though each has its own character and is admirable in slightly different ways, they somehow all come across as the product of a consistent artistic vision. That in itself is some sort of testament to Siouxsie's leadership, since it's a guitar-driven band that swapped out lead guitarists several times. Tinderbox seems to me the most consistent, though each of the others has one or more of my favorite cuts by this band.

20. Middle Cyclone (2009) – Neko Case

Shall we say Number Four in the Major NPR Pros Oversight count? One cannot be knowledgeable about contemporary alternative rock or folk music without knowing about Neko Case, or her two more or less equally brilliant albums, both of which I list here. You really have to wonder what kind of games they are playing over in that office that they could come up with such a list and not put either of her best albums on it. I have no big beef with k.d. laing or Teena Marie or Salt'n'Peppa or a great many of their other entries, but by almost any criteria whatever, Case towers over so many of the artists they chose, it's like they had a corkboard with the names of artists and threw darts at it to make a selection. Here the NPR Readers have provided the necessary corrective action, though they chose so many pop stars from the last two decades that you also have to wonder if they really identified Neko Case as the outstanding artist she is.

----------------------

Things have been getting more difficult album by album from the point of view of ranking. Of the last ten and the next ten I have no idea what order they should be in, or even whether they should be in any order at all. Nevertheless I believe we are still in the territory of albums that deserve a place somewhere closer to the top of the list than those that follow them.

21. All Over the Place (1984) – The Bangles

A terrific collection of R&R all the way through. It's a pity that The Bangles went in a more commercial direction after this, which is not to say they didn't make any more good music – who can really resist "Walk Like an Egyptian"? Be that as it may, this is clearly their masterpiece.

22. Me Myself I (1980) – Joan Armatrading

See above. If she needed anything more to establish solid rock credibility, this certainly meets all the requirements. Some of her other albums are not far behind. There's an odd symmetry between the lack of recognition of her work and that of Linda Perry with 4 Non-Blondes: two women of color with resonant voices playing original hard rock material – why is this so hard to acknowledge? Well, no one has a problem acknowledging Aretha Franklin, or Beyoncé, right? Ah, but they're doing what black women are supposed to do, singing some form of R&B, mainly. Here, though, we have some naughty ladies stepping over the line and doing straight-out rock and roll... that must be the problem. And to confirm the hypothesis we can point once again to my favorite neglected black-female-fronted rock band, Maxayn.

23. St. Vincent (2014) – St. Vincent

In case one needed proof that popular music is alive and well in this decade, this would probably sufficient all by itself. A knockout set of compositions (it feels almost like denigrating them to call them "songs") this is as fresh as it is thoughtful. "Prince Johnny" probably gets a place in my Deserted Island Cuts list. It would be superfluous to say more, but see my comments in the previous post in this series.

24. Court and Spark (1974) – Joni Mitchell

I seem to recall it was hailed as Mitchell's best album yet at the time. It is sobering to think that it was just a warmup for The Hissing of Summer Lawns.

25. Perfect Angel (1974) – Minnie Riperton

Little by little, older one-off albums have disappeared from my collection, but not this one. Riperton's amazing vocals and great song styling put her on a special plane. She co-wrote most of the album too. Another weird NPR miss.

26. 99.9 F (1992) – Suzanne Vega

Am I sure I want this one rather than Days of Open Hand or Nine Objects of Desire? No... There are at most fine shades of difference in quality between all her albums, so call this a placeholder for the middle period of her consistently excellent output.

27. Aerial (2005) – Kate Bush

What to do about Kate Bush in a list like this? She has a fanatical following and a deep well of respect among musicians. Her albums display a rare consistency of musical integrity; like David Bowie (who may have been channeling some of her ideas on Blackstar) she often has an ability to find the focal point where innovation and mass appeal meet. The only problem, for me, is that her albums tend to start off with one or two outstanding songs and then tilt towards what you might call connoisseur tastes. This is true of Never For Ever ("Babooshka"), Hounds of Love ("Running Up That Hill"), The Red Shoes ("Rubberband Girl"), The Sensual World ("The Sensual World") and Aerial ("King of the Mountains"). (The same might have been true of Lionheart, since the first cut, "Symphony in Blue" is clearly more engaging than either "Hammer Horror" or "Wow", but in a bizarre marketing decision, the former was released only in Japan and Canada while the other two were released worldwide.) This is not the place to get into all the nuances of her output, from her numerous literary, scientific and intellectual references to the always interesting production of her albums. I admire the restless energy of her compositions, her appeals to the folk music of the British Isles (one of many common elements with progressive rock), her moody piano sonorities on tracks like the opening of Fifty Words for Snow, and much else. But, as I have said too many times already, this is a list of great albums, not great careers, opening songs or ideas, and as song collections her albums often lose their grip rather quickly, sometimes drifting into fairly banal pop, sometimes pursuing endless shifts of rhythm, tempo, sonority and texture, and often sounding more like recitative than aria. It is also noteworthy that Bush, for all her influence, remains largely an English phenomenon as far as sales go; other than Hounds of Love, propelled by what is surely her greatest single track, her albums have made a very scattered impression worldwide, with The Red Shoes charting highest in the U.S. at 28. For this project I have listened to many of her albums again and again and tried to find the one that seems the most consistent. But my opinion of this still changes frequently, and I have little confidence that my choice of Aerial is more defensible than other choices. I know that Hounds of Love, Never For Ever and The Sensual World do not do it for me as albums, much as I like their best songs; and Fifty Words for Snow, which does have considerable merit as an album, nevertheless lacks any tracks that rise to the level of her best songs. I like The Red Shoes overall, though neither the critics nor Bush herself consider it her best work. It was my choice yesterday, and could be again tomorrow. But today I am going with Aerial because aside from some excellent tracks in the first part of the album (which would certainly not include her self-indulgent and otherwise ridiculous setting of a few dozen digits of π), I think the second part, a 42-minute suite, is largely successful. I do wish there were one Kate Bush album about which I could have total conviction, but alas I will just have to wait for Kate Bush's Greatest Hits - or create my own playlist.

28. She's So Unusual (1983) – Cindi Lauper

Here in Brooklyn we stand by our own sons and daughters, but we also know that people from Queens are citizens of the same greater body of land known as Long Island. So Cindi rocks - and bops, as we all know. This album, with its lengthy string of pop hits, has somehow always stood out from the mass of girl-pop albums, while almost epitomizing that idiom. Not sure how she managed that, but she did. Whatever she may owe to Madonna, this will always stand out, like Tapestry, as a masterpiece of female songwriting.

29. Jagged Little Pill (1995)– Alanis Morisette

And so will this, in a completely different way. Somehow you don't mind being assaulted by Morisette's angst, in the same way that you don't mind Lauper's feints in the direction of superficiality. I do wish that she had found a new direction for her lyrics at some point – as she racks up one musically consistent album after another she never quite moves on lyrically. Thus this first and probably best marker of her talent will stand in for an impressive career.

30. The Divine Miss M (1972) – Bette Midler

Bette Midler's album had an impact close to that of Tapestry when it came out, even though these were all covers. Her renditions of "Superstar" and "Hello in There" alone would make it a great album – and those weren't even the hits. I have included albums of covers only when they bear the mark of a highly original statement; like Pearl and a few others, this album did that.

31. One Day at a Time (1970) – Joan Baez

This has always been the Joan Baez album closest to my heart; from the title song and the beautiful Baez composition "Sweet Sir Galahad" (written for her sister Mimi Farina) to her covers of "Long Black Veil" and "In the Ghetto", I find every track moving. Her vocals set a standard few in folk or popular music have equaled. Diamonds and Rust, the NPR choice, has perhaps her best composition as its title tune, but overall I don't think the album is as good as this one. Her numerous albums of traditional folk songs, Dylan songs and even classical pieces are all worth a listen. Her recording Graçias a La Vida, consisting entirely of Latin American folk and nueva cançion (thus excluded from this list) is one of my favorite albums of all time.

32. Pirates (1981) – Rickie Lee Jones

Her unusual career is a bit too complex to get into here, but somehow she struck people across the rock and jazz spectrum as an artist of interest. Her diverse output is hard to capture by picking one album, but I agree with NPR that this one is a good candidate to represent her and probably her best work overall. She is one of those artists who showed that women can make their own way in popular music- the list of those is much longer than Patti Smith and Kate Bush and few punk rock icons, and Rickie Lee Jones certainly belongs on it.

33. Ray of Light (1998) – Madonna

I have nothing against Madonna's pop outings, they contain many classic songs in a vein that Madonna all but invented. But this is a more serious work, spiritual and forward-looking in its time. She more or less invented the electronic dance-pop genre here, while making an artistic and spiritual statement as well.

34. Sweet Old World (1992) – Lucinda WIlliams

I've said it so often in public and private that I think someone may strike me if I protest again that this is Williams' best album, not Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. So I won't. But even if you disagree with what I'm not saying again you at least have to admit that this is a great album.

35. Tuesday Night Music Club (1993) – Sheryl Crow

Why there should be only one Sheryl Crow album on this list I don't know; there are others just about as good. While precision is not really possible in this kind of undertaking, I have tried, as I said, to make fairly fine-grained judgements, and that leaves this one as her best by a hair.

36. The Scream (1978) – Siouxsie and the Banshees

This was NPR's pick and I do think it's great, though I put Tinderbox ahead of it. We're talking about an artist whose fourth or fifth best album ranks higher, for me, than a lot of stuff on the two NPR lists, so it was a little hard to choose.

37. It's My Way (1964) – Buffy Saint-Marie

The album gets high marks for guts and grit and fearless confrontation of social issues, and for having two of the greatest protest songs ever written: “Now That the Buffalo's Gone”, a more powerful defense of Native American rights than a thousand poison-tipped arrows, and “Universal Soldier”, which may have few fans among veterans (it squarely lays the blame for war on the people who actually do the killing) but captures the spirit of the old protest line, “what if they gave a war and nobody came?” “Universal Soldier” became a hit when Donovan covered it. Yet another song, “Cod'ine”, became famous when it was covered by Janis Joplin.  Saint-Marie also introduces Native American instruments, chants and (from what I can tell) language. But for all that, if this album were not so fitting for this list I might feel compelled to put one of her later efforts on it, as the next few albums each have a couple of classic original tunes. With the release of her 2017 album Medicine Man she had been putting out new, original material for 53 years, which sounds like some kind of record.

38. Joni Mitchell (1968) – Joni Mitchell

She hit the ground running with this still fresh-sounding album, her vocals already top notch, her guitar arrangements already sounding new and different. The songwriting leaves nothing to be desired either. A great start to a brilliant career. Pay no attention to those who insist on reading backward from her later albums and assure us that this was merely hint of what was to come. Her early work shouldn't be denigrated just because she matured from great to brilliant. (An undocumented comment on the album's Wikipedia page claims that the official title should have been Song to a Seagull, words that are part of the artwork and the title of one of the songs, and that there were printing and other errors in not using that title; in any case, though it is often known by that title, the official release was eponymous.)

39. Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (2006) – Neko Case

By the criteria NPR used to compile their list, not only the two Neko Case albums I chose but several Dirty Photographers disks would be valid choices, since Case sings most of their lead vocals. I have been diligent in not including albums "made by women – and men", at least insofar as the contributions of band members are concerned. But both of her genre-bending solo efforts contain one great composition after another.

40. True Stories and Other Dreams (1973) – Judy Collins

The Number Five inexcusable and unaccountable omission of the two NPR lists is Judy Collins. Her compilation album Colors of the Day is so key to my musical existence that it was difficult to resist making an exception and putting it on the list. Another critical outing is Judy Collins' Fifth Album, for its terrific choice of songs and particularly the rousing, live performance of Malvina Reynolds' "It Isn't Nice". But this album is one of the few that has more of her own compositions than covers, and by and large they stand up well next to terrific songs like Valerie Carter's "Cook With Honey" and Tom Paxton's "The Hostage". The NPR crowds managed to recognize a single Joan Baez album, probably based on a single Top 40 song about Bob Dylan, but they know little about folk music and therefore failed to include this equally important bearer of the folk music flag. Justice, about which she sang so movingly, has now prevailed!

*****

Beyond this point I don't have even a shadow of an argument for a comparative ranking of these albums. I start to wonder if I am really picking what I think are the best, or, contrary to what I promised, just trying to get everyone who deserves some respect onto the list. There are albums below that seem to have something great about them, but in some cases that judgement is slightly tempered by questions about a lack of significant innovation, or too much innovation, or a more than minimal amount of mediocre material, or stylistic choices that don't thrill me even if I recognize the album's quality in general. Others I love without apology, but not without some question as to whether mere familiarity makes it seem better than it is. In any case, the numbering from this point on is nothing more than a convenience for counting; I would have little issue with someone putting them all in a bingo spinner and picking one at a time in any order.

41. Tracy Chapman (1988) – Tracy Chapman

It's easy to forget what a revelation this was when it came out. Prominent black women in folk music were not that common – there was Odetta, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and not too many others who registered mainly in the folk-inspired acoustic singer-songwriter vein. The very idea of folk music having much of an impact on popular music in general seemed to be a thing of the past. Then this bolt of lightning... Every song is a gem. Her voice and diction are as unique as that of anyone in popular music, and her songwriting captures the knife edge of emotion as it tries to cut through the hardships of social injustice. As with Sade, the first album made such a huge impression that her later work either seems to be missing something by comparison, or to gain what power it has from being a product of the same spirit that produced this brilliant collection.

42. A Place in the World (1996) – Mary Chapin Carpenter

Another perverse oversight of the NPR crowd. She's a seriously talented songwriter who's been making her way on her own terms through the often narrow alleys of Nashville. Quite a few of her albums might be included here; this one is most familiar to me, and after listening to several others I have no reason to think it isn't the best of many excellent outings, though critics tend to prefer her earlier ones.

43. Platinum (2014) – Miranda Lambert

She's a bit different. Sassy and in your face in a way that's refreshing in the calcified world of Nashville (I just said that, didn't I? well, there I go again...) Her music is also beyond catchy. My only reservation about her is personal, not musical: what kind of an individual starts an association to protect shelter animals and also becomes a lifetime member of the NRA? Gotta love those poor little mutts; as for all the bloodied children, not so much. Such reservations aside, I'd rather hear her than Reba MacIntyre any day, even if Reba is technically the better singer; she just sounds fresh, in every sense of the word.

44. Whitney Houston (1985) – Whitney Houston

If she isn't simply the greatest singer who ever graced the pop charts then I don't know who is. I can hardly listen to her sing without tears starting to form, such is the beauty of her voice. I particularly cannot listen to her performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the 1991 SuperBowl without having a good cry. In my opinion, her albums, especially the ones after this, don't fully represent her vocal genius; it seems as if producers and company executives tried to steer her to traditional R&B material that did little to showcase her vocal abilities. Nevertheless, she all but paved the road for R&B and pop singers after her, bringing the style of spiritual, already deeply embedded in American popular music, right out into the open. Which makes this album a rare kind of milestone – like the Delaware Water Gap, there's no easy way to get around it, and why would you want to anyway?

45. Blown Away (2012) - Carrie Underwood

As I have already warned, place no stock in the order of selections at this point; it is more or less how they occurred to me. But Carrie Underwood owns one of the few voices in popular music that can come close to that of Whitney Houston. On purely technical grounds she might even be better, in the sense that Jascha Heifetz might be a better violinist than David Oistrakh, though for the perfect combination of tone and expression I will still choose Whitney (and Oistrakh). She bears comparison with Whitney in another sense: her albums as a whole are nowhere near as good as she is. Not that they don't showcase her voice, they are just not (overall) made up of the best material. Singing like hers, though, can't easily be shoved under the rug.

46. Wave (1979) – Patti Smith

As with Kate Bush, I really had a hard time with Ms. Smith. In the first place, I am just not as impressed with any of her albums as I am with her overall artistic persona. Secondly, it seems to be my fate to be swatting away the flies of critical consensus: it is not only Ann Powers and NPR but the community (if such they are) of rock critics as a whole that endorses Blue, New York Tendaberry, Like a Prayer and Horses as the finest albums by their respective creators. In each case I disagree, and never more strongly than about Horses. I first heard the album some time in the 70's, not very long after it came out, and didn't like it. But as the volume of critical approval grew, I bought it and continued to listen to it periodically, and again – at least 3 more times – after the NPR list appeared. Final verdict: "Break It Up" is the only song that really appeals to me; her disruptive rendition of "Gloria" is interesting; and "Redondo Beach" was an early if not otherwise outstanding entry in the white reggae trend that took hold in the mid-late 70's. In terms of attitude and lyrics the album certainly is a milestone of some sort; but I am not judging great attitudes here, just great albums. My only solace in the opinion that Horses is not one of those is that my two brothers, who, like myself, are lifelong musicians and rock fans, with tastes that often differ from mine (and each other's), seem to concur in the opinion that it's not a particularly listenable album. Having been turned off by the album I made little attempt to consider Smith's later work very carefully, until now; and now that I have done so I am pleased to now call myself a kind of Patti Smith fan, because I like almost all of her later albums better than Horses. In particular, her next three – Radio Ethiopia, Easter and Wave are all much more compelling. I am amused by Smith's Wikipedia entry, where the author opines that Radio Ethiopia is "considerably less accessible than Horses". That may apply to a couple of the cuts at the end, including the title song, but in general the album seems to me considerably more accessible than Horses – more than one of the cuts has a very Dylanesque feel, and some of the others are good old-fashioned hard rock (indeed here and there I was moved to compare it – not disparagingly - with Grand Funk). There is little on any of these albums, including Horses, that sounds much like punk, unless "punk" means anything that is not pop, folk or prog – which these certainly are not. Easter almost won my vote, not mainly for the hit "Because the Night" (which starts to sound like a Springsteen cover as soon as you learn that they co-wrote it) but because it has a good deal of great rock and roll, rarely mainstream and always with Smith's patented vocals and poetry. But in the end I found Wave more consistently appealing, without losing the edge that defined her as a great innovator. I did take note of the decidedly different opinion of Ira Robbins in his Trouser Press review of the album: he calls the production "inappropriate", her lyrics "preciously self-indulgent", her cover of The Byrds' "So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star" "misguided... phony and self-conscious" and most of the record "unfocused and half-baked, frequently insufferable". Whew! The lyrics – yeah, self-indulgent and full of clichés too; but if I were going to eliminate albums due to the lyrics then no Led Zeppelin recording would ever make it onto my list of great albums. Since that is unthinkable, why apply a different standard to women? (To get a little closer to Trouser Press's core expertise, should we talk about the lyrics, if they qualify as such, on The Ramones' Rocket to Russia?) I don't know why Smith chose to cover that Byrds song either; it does seem a bit "misguided", an attempt at irony that falls flat (the irony was already there in the original, and twice-told irony is always stale). Musically, though, they give it a pretty good reading, including some great lead guitar work. Other than that, like I said, the album retains Smith's edginess while being very listenable. And that is as good a statement of what makes a great album as any I could come up with: make it edgy but musically satisfying. Great lyrics enhance the package but you rarely get them.

47. To Bring You My Love (1995) – P.J. Harvey

I've listened to most of her albums – some are way out there, too raucous and aggressive for my taste, though one has to appreciate the way British musicians manage to turn the infamous national penchant for reserving emotions on its head. This album does that well enough, I think, but also demonstrates some impressive songwriting that plays to a way more punk than pop aesthetic, without losing the thread of accessibility.

48. Other Voices, Other Rooms (1993) – Nanci Griffith

If ever anyone ever made a truly great album just by picking a truly great set of other people's songs, while avoiding most of the obvious choices in the same genre, this is it. I do want to at least give honorable mention to an important predecessor, which is happily now available in digital form: Priscilla Herdman's 1987 album Darkness Into Light, which had a strong influence on me. She has many other albums that I am not familiar with, mostly also covers. Griffith sometimes writes her own music, as for example on her album Clock Without Hands; but this collection has her stamp all over it, and with brilliant consistency brings one lesser known gem after another to shining realization. Here too the unseen hand of Judy Collins is at work; it was she who made an art of collecting brilliant but lesser-known songs into a cohesive folk music album, giving them each a signature reading that helped the song make its way into the national consciousness. Griffith follows this example with exemplary taste and musicianship.

49. The Memory of Trees (1995) – Enya

Number Six on the list of unforgivable NPR omissions. You can pigeonhole her as "New Age" if you want, or downplay her as a Celtic musician who lacks the authenticity of the Clancy Brothers. Whatever – she all but single-handedly created a new musical style with roots in Celtic music, and became the second most popular musical artist in Irish history (after U2). I have four of her albums, not including her work with Clannad, and they are all a bit different; this one has stood out over time as the most engaging.

50. Unrepentant Geraldines (2014) – Tori Amos

As I said, I go back and forth about what my favorite Tori Amos albums are. I sometimes use the Microsoft star rating system to remind myself of the best cuts on albums. On this I gave 5 stars to one song (the first, "America") and 4 stars to five others, which makes six excellent-to-great songs on one album - pretty high for me. Everyone is granted one glib piece of nonsense like "Giant's Rolling Pin" per album, and there is almost nothing she writes that I don't find appealing on some level, so even with eight songs that strike me as "good enough" this album makes the cut.

51. The Book of Secrets (1997) – Loreena McKennitt

That this album occurs so far down the list from her The Mask and the Mirror is one of the absurdities of listmaking - it is just about as good, and could arguably be called her finest. I just didn't know what to displace in order to feature a second Loreena McKenitt album, and I happen to so love a couple of the tracks on The Mask and the Mirror, in particular “The Bonnie Swans”, that I couldn't see them any further down. But “The Highwayman” is roughly the equal of them. Just put the albums on random play as you settle in for a long flight and be prepared to let your cell phone power go to 0 rather than take them off.

52. Short, Sharp, Shocked (1988) - Michelle Shocked

The Texas Campfire Tapes, the low-fi indie tape whose hand to hand circulation made Shocked an underground folk sensation, was eventually released as an album, but was not really conceived that way. Her Arkansas Traveller is an album, and contains one of the great pop songs to come out of the folk music corner, "Come a Long Way" (perhaps comparable to Shawn Colvin's "Sunny Came Home"). But it is largely a bluegrass album, and judged in that way it is not exceptional. Short, Sharp Shocked, her first commercial release, is a terrific album, mostly written by her, and should be on anyone's list of great albums by women. (Shocked's later political and spiritual foibles are not of much interest in evaluating her music, but in any case one would be hard pressed to find any trace of homophobia or intolerance on this album.)

53. Lili (1997) – Lili Haydn

I knew this had to be on my list when I played it and realized that every song on the album is familiar to me – certainly not from airplay, but because every time I have spun the CD, just about every song grabbed me. That is not the case with albums I've played far more often, and speaks to both the quality of the songwriting and the originality of her arrangements, in which her violin playing figures prominently and to great effect. (Full disclosure: I'm a violinist, and performed the fiddle parts on the one album I have released, so I'm a bit partial to original violin work, but I believe the album transcends that prejudice.)

54. Blue (1971) – Joni Mitchell

Okay, Blue, for goodness sake – I never said it wasn't a great album. It's just not her best. I mean, if I say that The Times They Are A-Changing is not Dylan's best album, or even one of his five best, does that mean it's not a great album? Seriously.

55. Tell Mama (1968) – Etta james

Etta James released more than 30 studio albums and many others besides, and if one had time to listen to them all no doubt there would be other choices. But NPR's choice, her 1964 live recording Rocks the House, should not be on either their list or mine, since it contains live versions of previously recorded material. Tell Mama is the early James album for this occasion. Like Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Nancy Griffith, Whitney Houston and Bette Midler she makes the list with a recording of covers. And like them, her versions are powerful, transformative interpretations that make it seem like she wrote the songs, so much does she invest in them.

56. Germfree Adolescents (1978) – X-Ray Spex

As one-hit wonders go, this one is up there with the best of them. Poly Styrene quit the band after this late 70's punk album and they didn't release another one until 1995. It's a significant piece of punk history and a consistently interesting set of songs.

57. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998) – Lauryn Hill

While I am not so blown away by this album to call it the second greatest album ever made by a woman, as NPR did, it is a strong artistic statement and another one-off achievement. The fact that neither "neo-soul" nor "hip-hop" nor "reggae" completely captures the creative spirit of the album is an indication of Hill's originality and vision (as with Janelle Monae's equally unclassifiable recordings). But the almost universal admiration it gets is probably due in part to a quality that few albums share: the sense that you are almost a part of it, that rather than being presented with some alienated consumer object, you could be her friend or roommate hanging out and listening to her in a college dorm room. That was a brilliant approach, one that recalls another great R&B milestone, Marvin Gaye's What's Going On? Too bad she didn't follow it up and develop as an artist, considering how much authority this one effort still carries after two decades. There are 20^th Anniversary celebrations going on as I write this. (Well, I wrote a lot of these reviews some time ago.)

58. Let It Be Written, Let It Be Sung (1973) – Ellie Greenwich

I don't care how many people covered her songs, her album is not a mere footnote to her legacy. They are, after all, her songs (with Jeff Barry, and in some cases Phil Spector) and her vocals; the production is terrific, and the album sounds like an integral effort, not so-to-speak covers of her own work. It has been a regular feature on my turntable since I stumbled on it decades ago, and will be so for the foreseeable future. So, let it be honored.

59. Dig Me Out (1997) – Sleater-Kinney

Another band that I respect more than love, but this is a fine set of songs and justifies their exalted position as post-punkers.

60. Tales From the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles (2014) – Suzanne Vega

As I said earlier, she seems to get better and better by small degrees, though I would not have any strong arguments against substituting anything since Days of Open Hand for this one. Her unique sensibility as a songwriter contrasts strongly with both the relatively predictable folk/country crowd and the more recent crop of Lana Del Ray knockoffs, which offsets whatever assists she may have received from labels and producers.

61. Homogenic (1997) - Björk

I'm not a big Björk fan (in fact I liked the Sugarcubes better) – I listened to just about her entire output before creating this list, and was ready to call it a day and forget her until this album came to my attention. The critics are right this time – this is a creative peak, Post notwithstanding. To my ears it is the one that shows she can write songs as well as experiment with sounds. (The well-known cabaret-style number from Post is not enough by itself to demonstrate that.) And she manages to contain her tendency to turn what sound like text messages or bits of idle chatter into lyrics. I wish she would do more like this.

62. All Hail the Queen (1989) - Queen Latifah

I admit to having limited tolerance for rap: it has to sound classic and it has to have real content and be devoid of gratuitous violence, explicit sexism and puerile, raunchy, tiresome bedroom chatter. Thus, L'il Kim I can do without, for reasons just stated. Missy Elliott is very important to others in the business but I don't find her own albums all that compelling (I realize there are plenty of rap fans who disagree with me on this). Queen Latifah has the rhythm, the words and the content to make her the only rap artist, strictly speaking, on the list.

63. Bachelor #2 (2000) – Aimee Mann

I said earlier that it “may be warmed-over Sheryl Crow” but still “damn good”. I admit that I'm starting to scratch for albums that meet all my criteria and seem to be the best efforts by the best female musicians. But this bit of new folk has enough originality to qualify as better than just “good”.

64. Nobody's Daughter (2010) - Hole

Despite all the sturm und drang surrounding it and the lukewarm critical reviews, this is Courtney Love's best album, as she herself claimed. Her debut with Hole, Live Through This, gets a lot more attention, as do her other 1990's releases with the original Hole lineup, but they simply do not have the combination of raw intensity and great writing that this does. Nobody's Daughter might have been Love's second solo album, as it was originally intended to be, but in spite of the dubious distinction between a short-term group of new "Hole" members and a bunch of studio musicians, the album is a triumph. It's better than her 1998 Celebrity Skin too, which got several Grammy nominations, primarily because that album sounds a bit too much like a Sheryl Crow wannabe release, even to the point of pretentiously taking "California" as a "theme" (why not a cover of "All I Wanna Do" while she's at it?) This one is just more original, more raw, gutsier in every way. It has been the go-to Hole album for me since it was released. (As an aside, it is another Linda Perry triumph, of a different sort than 4 Non Blondes – as producer and songwriter in this case.)

65. Same Rain (1992) – Pat Humphries

This debut album by Pat Humphries is simply one of the finest collections of original songwriting I know. The standout pick among many excellent albums by musicians I used to know in the People's Music Network, I wish I could tell you to check it out on Spotify, but alas, it is not to be found, as of this writing. (Several new and used copies were available on Amazon, though.) Pat's later album Hands is there, and it contains a slightly mellower version of "Swimming to the Other Side", from which the title of the first album is drawn ("We're all living 'neath the great Big Dipper/We're all washed by the very same rain/We're all swimming in the stream together/Some in power and some in pain..."). I do have a short list of songs that should be beamed across the universe to give whoever might be out there some idea of the human spirit in its most positive aspect, and this song is on it no matter how short the list might be.

66. Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (2015) – Courtney Barnett

What can you do when something like this comes along other than admire it, smile, and ask why you didn't come up with this kind of thing yourself? A sense of its having been there all along waiting to happen may be one mark of a great album, and artist. Although she is generally averse to melodies, Barnett can write them when she wants to. She is not trying to be a British rapper like MIA but rather presents her lyrics like a one-sided conversation with an almost Dylanesque sense of irony. Few artists bear comparison to Dylan, so that alone signifies that there is something unusual happening here.

67. Loud CIty Song (2013) - Julia Holter

I don't pretend to understand everything that I like or admire; in fact, in spite of being the proud possessor of a degree from a music conservatory, I don't understand much of what drives contemporary classical music. But I know what I think is good, great, or not so much. So although I can't entirely explain what Ms. Holter thinks she is doing, I often find it highly effective. It defies genre classification, but belongs to popular music in some sense or other. You could dance to it in the way you can dance to just about anything if you're willing to work out the choreography, but it is more the kind of thing that warrants sitting back with a good set of headphones and zoning out, dropping any expectations about what rock music should be, since it will relentlessly defy them. If Laurie Anderson married Peter Gabriel, Julia might be their daughter. I like some of her other albums too, but this one particularly grabs me.

68. Taking the Long Way (2006) – Dixie Chicks

They were "not ready to make nice" after their 2003 public statement condemning George W. Bush and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was completely justified by everything we learned since, but was loudly criticized by conservatives at the time. But they were ready to make great music on this album. That "don't tell us what to say" attitude perhaps contributes to making this album feel more original and ballsy than Wide Open Spaces. I like them both, but considering how confining the parameters of the Nashville sound tend to be I have chosen only those country albums that seem to me just the slightest bit different in some way, and this one fits that description.

69. Rock a Little (1985) – Stevie Nicks

She does just as the album title says – for a change. And that gets this one onto my list. I'm neither a fan of the Buckingham/Nicks Fleetwood Mac, nor of their joint outings, nor of her solo work, as a whole. I've made it plain that I don't care much about awards, sales or critical consensus(es? consensi? ask a Latin scholar) all of which suggest that I am tone deaf if not brain dead. Even the warm recommendations of friends and relatives have not made me a Nicks fan. There is something that doesn't sit right about almost every song she's done except "Rhiannon". Yes, I can occasionally be found walking down the street unconsciously mumbling some FM hit, just as I might find myself mouthing "Don't stop... beleeeving..." until I hear myself and gag. But I did a lot of listening, and while I wouldn't call this a stellar album, it fits pretty well at this point on the list. Note that by my criteria, neither FM nor Buckingham/Nicks would qualify for this list of albums "made by women" anyway, so I was evaluating her solo albums only.

70.  Aggro-Phobia (1976) – Suzi Quatro

Neither NPR list recognizes any Suzi Quatro album as among the greatest by a woman. While I can't call this one of the great oversights, since her albums vary quite a bit in quality, it is an oversight nonetheless, since this one doesn't. She and guitarist Len Tuckey wrote half the songs, the "Chinnichap" camp (Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn) who provided some of her early hits contributed one, and there are several other excellent covers. (Her dynamite remake of "Heartbreak Hotel" alone is worth the price of the album.) Typical of Quatro and her band, every song has some kind of distinctive touch, even when it is basically straight-up R&R. That is true of her other early albums too, but this one seems to me the most creative and consistent. Aside from just being an excellent album, consider her contribution to women's rock music. She was the first widely recognized female rock band leader, and she was not leading a band of women, but men. She co-wrote a good deal of her own material, sang all the lead vocals, and played the bass. She was a major inspiration to Joan Jett and Tina Weymouth and to countless girls for whom she broke down the doors of the male rock syndicate.

71. The Walking (1987) – Jane Siberry

What an odd patchwork quilt of a legacy she has, and similar in certain respects to some of her Canadian compatriots. She began with some quite folksy albums, migrated to electronics where she did both pop and some more experimental stuff, not to mention a Christmas album and at least one rather sanctimonious if well-meaning set of socio-political commentaries. I can hardly claim to have listened to every note she has recorded, but from what I know she has not surpassed this masterpiece. As usual, I am on my own little island of admiration here, since this disk got neither overwhelming critical praise nor tremendous sales. For me, there is only one possible criticism you could make of it, and that is that if it had been released with Kate Bush's name on the cover no one would have doubted it was authentic. (The Wikipedia entry mentions "Laurie Anderson-style performance art narratives", but those actually occupy a relatively small portion of the album.) Being (or at least sounding) heavily influenced by Kate Bush is not exactly a crime, nor exactly unusual, so get over it and check out the original and (critics once again be damned) very melodic and appealing use to which the style is put here.

72. Breakaway (2004) - Kelly Clarkson

This is a dynamite set of songs, by a singer who set an early standard for American Idol success stories and then veered into a bunch of ideological and personal stuff that we can remain silent about while acknowledging the extraordinary quality of this album. Only Carrie Underwood has been more impressive as a vocalist.

73. Back to Black (2006) - Amy Winehouse

I'm neither jumping on the Winehouse bandwagon, nor do I wish to completely ignore a pretty good set of songs which nicely imitate older styles, and are put over with a certain amount of flair. She was some sort of blue-eyed neo-soul phenomenon and it's too bad she didn't have a chance to develop, though who knows where that would have led.

74. The Idler Wheel Is Wiser... (2012) - Fiona Apple

As I said in my last post, I have come to appreciate Tidal more than I used to, but much of it still sounds to me like she was trying to pick out Laura Nyro tunes on the piano and then wrote a few homages herself. With this album, however, there is no longer a serious question about originality. The more serious question is whether it is rock, jazz or something else. I'm not sure of anything except that it is not obviously modern jazz, therefore it gets a pass as some kind of popular music. Hooks are not exactly the point here, but the sonorities are intriguing, and it gains in sincerity and vision whatever it may give up in direct songwriting appeal. (A last minute note: as I was all set to publish this I heard Apple's Extraordinary Machine for the first time, and might have replaced Idler Wheel with that pick, as I found it immediately appealing in a way that I'm not sure Idler Wheel always is. I might pick them both, but I was done trying to knock albums off the list, or expanding it. I also have some qualms about the process that led to the release of Extraordinary Machine, as it seems to have been comandeered by a group of male producers before the company would let it out. But she still wrote the songs, sang them and played the keyboards, so maybe that is not a major concern. Anyway, it's an excellent album.)

75. Shine (2007) - Joni Mitchell

Let her close it as she opens it. This final studio effort of hers is once again a mark of her genius. Many aging rock and folk-rock stars have moved in the direction of American Songbook tributes, even to roughly a cocktail piano sensibility. But each of them are different and original and do more than simply imitate. That's true of this album too, a mellow but never boring look at the world by a songwriter who no longer needed to prove anything, having pretty much reinvented folk-rock and jazz-rock and set a direction for women in popular music that has continued to be influential for what will soon be half a century. Shine is what she does, brighter than any star on this list and as bright as any popular musician anywhere.

*****

Well, that's it. Without listing every single album by a few stellar artists it was hard to find even 75 “great” albums that are overwhelmingly driven by female artists, so you can imagine why I think the NPR lists of 150 are weighed down by inferior efforts, many of which are there to represent great artists who simply don't have any great albums, or popular artists who are not great. This should answer most of the critics who suggest I must have forgotten someone or other. No, I didn't forget the Indigo Girls, I'm just not impressed enough with any particular aspect of their work, except the non-musical fact that they did what they did with an all-female cast. Did not forget Beyoncé, or Lemonade, she and it are just not my cup of tea. Rihanna's Anti- was on the list until the very last moment when I decided the songwriting and stylistic innovations were just not special enough to displace any of the other entries. I've defended my idiosyncratic opinions often enough in the course of seven pieces on this subject that anyone who reads the whole series would by now have a pretty good idea why I have not included this or that group or album. Now I must let it rest.

Anyway, I'm exhausted after seven posts on this subject (this one alone runs to over 16,000 words), but I still can't claim that I've been exhaustive. Walk into any thrift shop that sells records and CD's – there will be lots by female artists we have not even considered. Lisa Loeb. Lori Lieberman. Jane Olivor. Women whose albums turn up in $1 bins, but the value of their music by no means always corresponds to the price, and I'm by no means certain that some of their efforts don't surpass some of the albums I've selected. And that's just scratching the surface of what I have not had time to consider. There are lots of contemporary artists whose names have not shown up: lesser known songwriters like Rachel Yamagata, better known ones like Regina Spektor. And female artists who are highly popular but so far not recognized on either NPR's two lists or mine: Christina Aguilera, Katy Perry, Pink, Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande. (Since Lady Gaga and Lorde only showed up on the Readers list, who knows if the pop figures just mentioned were only a wee bit behind in the voting?) Not to mention some interesting country artists who I just could not fit in: Iris Dement (Infamous Angel was an early candidate), Roseanne Cash, and Faith Hill, for starters.

It's hard to say where it stops, if it does, because someone is uploading some new work to Spotify or YouTube as you read, and it may be the first and last album they will ever do, but that never says much about its quality. Two examples: (1) While I was in the middle of this project I sat down in a local coffee shop and met a young woman named Sara Kendall; she was working on a video for her latest song. I think she had a total of 14,000 listens on Spotify, the amount that Beyoncé probably gets per minute. I added about a dozen more, and most of what I heard was comparable in style and quality to plenty of much more popular stuff, say, Grimes, Happy Rhodes or St. Vincent. Could she be next? (2) Remember Maxayn, the group I have ranted about periodically, fronted by Maxayn Lewis? Though almost completely forgotten (at least prior to the recent re-release of their albums on CD and streaming services), in the late 1970's I found two of their records in a box of albums I bought for a few bucks, and have been a diehard fan ever since; at least one of their albums would surely be on this list but for the fact that Maxayn Waters is not the only leading musical force on their albums. The point is, there is way more great stuff out there than any listmaker can listen to.

So maybe we should give up then. The trouble is, these lists are fun, and fun is good, as Dr. Seuss reminded us. I have tried to discharge my duty to argue with the NPR (and other similar lists, both older and newer) without becoming as ridiculous as I think their lists are, in part by eliminating one of the most absurd aspects of the project: I make no claim as to a real order of greatness beyond the first half of the list or so, and even there I openly express my doubts. On the value of many individual albums I am pretty certain; others, not so much. I have tried to rescue some gems from obscurity and relegate some overhyped stuff to the dustbins. In the end, it's one man's opinion of women's popular music albums. I hope I have at least given you food for thought, and perhaps some valuable recommendations for listening.

And now (3 or 4 deep breaths) the Parrot can once again turn his attention to other cultural matters. Squawck!