London Calling is the best. Every second of it is awesome and exciting.

Differing opinions, but this is not the place to discuss it (coughstillabbeyroadcough). Anyway, any more thoughts on the top 20?

1. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
2. Pet Sounds
3. What's Going On
4. Revolver
5. Highway 61 Revisited
6. Live At The Apollo
7. Rubber Soul
8. Dark Side Of The Moon
9. Thriller
10. Are You Experienced?
11. Nevermind
12. Exile On Main St.
13. Born To Run
14. Blonde On Blonde
15. Elvis Presley
16. Abbey Road
17. It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
18. London Calling
19. Innervisions
20. Who's Next

I'm sure okay with it.

Seems fine to me. And Deany, I never meant to assault your intelligence at any point if you felt I did, I'm sorry. I had a really fun argument. I get REALLY into it though, the whole time was mainly me trying to play the devils advocate, I knew LC and NoM were really close, just felt I should get nitty gritty about it It was fun. Nice outcome, like the list.

It's certainly not the only way to establish popularity, but it's one, yes. Besides, while we heavily weight the US and the UK here, rap is big in a lot of places, not just a few countries.



First of all, Queensryche has never had a number one hit in the US or the UK. "Silent Lucidity" was a pretty big hit, but so was "Until It Sleeps", so your analogy fails.

But at any rate, if you're going to say that hits don't prove popularity, then you need something that counteracts it. I'm assuming that Metallica has sold a LOT more albums than Queensryche has. That's how we know they're more popular. That's why I provided album sales numbers, too.



Actually, it does. So does the fact that rap albums are routinely among the biggest selling albums of the year, worldwide.



No--artists who sell music strictly online simply aren't "extremely popular".



Source?



Not quite--you also have to look at album sales and concert success, for example. But she's more popular than either, yes. But, again, I never said singles were the only thing.



Then provide me some evidence of that, because I don't believe you.

And I notice that you've gone from "electronica" to "electronica/dance music", which is changing the subject. Dance pop is a very big genre, but I see no evidence that, say, Katy Perry or Rhianna is any more influenced by Kraftwerk than she is by Public Enemy.



You're giving me your personal experience. I have no way of knowing how typical that is. Give me numbers. Give me sources. Give me evidence.

Alright, I had this huge, three times as long, pointless post. Let me simplify it, despite the length. There are so many enumerable electronic artists all over the world, possibly more artists than rap albums, no joke. Start looking up artists under sub-genres of electronic music, which, btw, has hundreds and hundreds of sub-genres. Now, the numbers are to a degree that's nearly immeasurable, and I have a lot trouble finding artist and genre sales in the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Thailand, Korea, etc. I have enough trouble finding the sales for China and Japan. However, this much is certain. Rap is the most popular sub-genre of the last 25 years in north America and Britain, arguably Europe. This is not saying it's not popular in Asia and other countries, just not anywhere near the most popular. Electronic music is the most popular sub-genre of China and Japan, that I can prove, and I don't need the time because if you think that you can show me rap is more popular in those countries, I'd like to see you put in the painstaking hair splitting effort to pull enough rap sales and downloads to total maybe 1/50 of the electronic ones. Now, if the most popular sub genre in China and Japan, whose populations combined exceed that of NA and Europe combined (it accounts for more than 1/7 of the worlds total population), while electronic music also has a very, very heavy following in Europe and now quite a large one in the US, even if it's less than rap, it's catching up, and more of a following in South America as well, how can rap be the dominant genre, when it's max popularity resides in a region with a total population that is equivalent to, if not less, than that of the population of TWO COUNTRIES where electronic music is heavily, heavily dominant over rap and the most popular sub-genre in those nations. India you may think could be a big tie breaker, however it's most dominant genre is arguably it's own pop style music, followed most likely by electronic, however rap has a popular following in India, but it varies heavily, if anything, electronic music wins by a fair margin.

So if you say rap is the most popular genre of the last 20 years in the western hemisphere, then I'll agree without a single doubt in my mind. But I don't know how you can say the world when the most popular sub-genre of a continent where just ONE of it's countries accounts for all of NA and EU combined is also widespread and has a large following in nearly every other continent in the world, if not country, RIGHT behind rap in widespread popularity, then that's just nuts. You also need to consider the fact that electronic music already had a cult following and was being produced in Asia and Europe before rap even surfaced in either region.

Also this is really irrelevant to this particular list, I was just refuting the repeated statement that rap has been the most popular sub-genre in the world for the past 20 years. If you don't believe me, fine, you don't have to. If you want exact numbers, do it yourself. I'm estimating based on research I've done and I don't want to name 500+ sources, unlike rap and billboard tracked music, there are just too many electronic artists in the world, even too many major mainstream ones in foreign countries to accurately track. So you can believe me or not, but I feel we should get back to album discussions for a top 30

I'm gonna throw up a 21 - 30:

21. Purple Rain (Prince)
22. Led Zeppelin II (Led Zeppelin)
23. Songs In The Key Of Life (Stevie Wonder)
24. The Joshua Tree (U2)
25. Rumours (Fleetwood Mac)
26. Modern Sounds In Country & Western Music (Ray Charles)
27. The Beatles (The White Album) (The Beatles)
28. Blue (Joni Mitchell)
29. The Velvet Underground & Nico (The Velvet Underground)
30. Tapestry (Carole King)

???

I might put Modern Sounds above Rumours. The lead in influence for it is huge. Rumours could possibly take acclaim and popularity, but I don't think it could overcome what it lacks in influence.

switch Modern Sounds with Rumours and it looks fine to me.

Also, what about VU vs. Blue? They are both of about equal acclaim and influence is tipped far in the favor of VU.

But popularity is tipped far in the favor of Blue. Also, Blue was consistently acclaimed from its release, while VUGaN was panned upon release.

It was?

If I recall correctly...okay, scratch that. It was actually largely ignored upon release. It's initial popularity is practically zero.

I think Deany's right about that. But I think the influence of VU is going to outweigh Blue's popularity, so if Blue has more acclaim, then I'd concede that they're in the correct placements.

I'd say Blue takes acclaim. It's been consistently lauded since its release, while praise for ...& Nico, though gushing, only emerged decades after its releases.