Vital Pop: 50 Essential Pop Albums

We here at Slant believe that there aren't enough lists. So we've decided to create another one. “Vital Pop” is a list of 50 essential pop albums. Defining the word “pop” was a task in and of itself. Just a few of the informal definitions we stumbled upon were “of or for the general public,” “intended for the popular taste, esp. as exploited commercially,” and “to burst open with a short, sharp, explosive sound.” But none of these seemed to fit the idea-bubble floating above our heads. Here, “pop” isn't a broad definition, which means no hip-hop (sorry, Lauryn, Dr. Dre) and no straight-up rock (no Nirvana, no Radiohead). Instead, we have chosen to focus on pure, post-rock-n'-roll-era pop genres (pop/rock, pop-soul, synth-pop, dance-pop, electronic-pop, folk-pop, dream-pop, vocal-pop, Euro-pop, jangle-pop, alt-pop—basically anything with the word “pop” attached to it), which can all be defined with disease-like words like “infectious,” “contagious,” and, our favorite, “gelatinous.”

We have excluded live albums and greatest hits collections (with the sole exception of disco diva Donna Summer's On the Radio, since so much of the genre was singles-driven and her continuous-mix collection, which included two new songs, might be the single best example of how to package and present a greatest hits album). Some of our choices have been deemed “classics” (Thriller, Pet Sounds), others are more obscure (Belly's King), while still others are less-heralded albums by established artists (U2's Pop, for example). This is by no means a definitive VH1-style greatest-of-all-time list. We have chosen what we think are some of the best pop albums ever made. Since we've limited the list to 50, only one record per artist is permitted (Prince, however, has at least one co-writing or producing credit on no less than nine albums on our list).