* Rolling Stone Five-Star Rated (Mostly Rock) Albums

All of the five-star rated albums (as reviewed by a certain music magazine that gathers no moss).

2005-10-17 – Separated main page into decades pages.
2005-07-04 – Initially published.

• Five-Star Rated (Mostly Rock) Albums: The 2000s
• Five-Star Rated (Mostly Rock) Albums: The 1990s
• Five-Star Rated (Mostly Rock) Albums: The 1980s
• Five-Star Rated (Mostly Rock) Albums: The 1970s
• Five-Star Rated (Mostly Rock) Albums: The 1960s
• Five-Star Rated (Mostly Rock) Albums: The 1950s, 1940s, 1930s, 1920s

Since 1967, a certain music magazine that gathers no moss has been reviewing (mostly rock) albums. As of 07/04/05 (the date this page was originally published), there were 8528 CD reviews in their database, and just under 2% of them are rated “five stars” (the magazine’s highest rating). But if you wanted to find all of the five-star rated CDs, you’d have to manually scroll through 342 pages of reviews. If you wanted to buy all of the five-star CDs, it would take you even longer. This is just one example of how the music industry is broken.

The Internet has been mainstream now for over a decade, but it is still extremely difficult to find, sort, preview, and buy music. If you wanted to find all of the songs that were hits when you were in college, preview them, and buy them, where would you go? If you wanted to find the top jazz albums of the 1960s, could you? If you wanted to buy MP3s and CDs simultaneously, could you find a vendor to sell them to you?

The following list includes all of the five-star rated albums (as reviewed by a certain music magazine that gathers no moss). I have attempted to sort the list by the date the music was originally recorded, but, again, the music industry makes this data very difficult to find. Note the dearth of five-star rated CDs in the 1990s. Perhaps music quality has something to do with CD sales over the last few years.