The Greatest Album Of All Time?

This is a notion that I am struggling with, not least of all because The Queen Is Dead probably wouldn’t even register in my Top 50. The whole idea of choosing the ‘Greatest Album Of All Time’ seems a useless endeavour in self-indulgent musical wankery. Similarly-minded journalists all from the same middle-of-the-road publication all get together and have a jolly good time telling each other what good taste they have.

The question that immediately came to mind was exactly what do they mean by ‘greatest’? How do they define a ‘great album’? The thing that gets me is that it’s hard to make a case for The Queen Is Dead in any sense of the word ‘great’. Most popular and universally loved? I think The Beatles have that covered. Most important, politically and culturally? I find it difficult to place The Smiths above the likes of Bob Dylan or Bob Marley. Most influential, musically? I can’t really see it. Of course, those siding with NME’s decision will say it’s a combination of all these categories and many more that makes The Queen Is Dead the greatest album of all time, but I just don’t buy it.

I think my point can be reinforced by looking at the selection NME gave of some of their staff’s personal Top 10 picks. The first thing I noticed was that The Queen Is Dead was ranked first on precisely none of them. In fact, the highest it ranked on any of their lists was fifth, and, judging by the way Mr. Renshaw seems to believe The Smiths can occupy three of the Top 10, I’d say he just has a hard-on for Morrissey. So the album that was ‘the greatest’ for no one, is apparently the greatest for everyone? Something seems amiss here. It’s this that highlights how farcical the system for deciding the greatest album of all time was for NME. The Queen Is Dead ranked fairly highly on a lot of peoples’ lists - and rightly so, I can see why - and so accumulated the most points. But I think the crucial point is that everyone believed there were more deserving albums than The Queen Is Dead.

It seems to me that this is a result that most people will say “Yeah, I suppose that’s fair enough” to, but not one that anyone truly agrees with. Though, maybe no result would be satisfactory. Maybe NME knows this and just put out any old list to sell more magazines. That seems likely to me - though I wouldn’t put it past them to just be hopelessly ignorant.