There are many things that can be said about the boomers, not all of them nice, necessarily, but to focus on the music from that generation, it was pretty great, for the most part. Take what Wikipedia says with a grain of salt, of course, but the page there for “classic rock” does mention it being associated with the baby boomer generation. It’s also nice to be able to define when the period of “classic rock” was versus ordinary rock.
As for that definition, here, it’s going to be focused on the 1970s, with a couple of stragglers into the 1980s. The following albums can all be classified as some kind of rock, be it of the folk, hard, or art variety, and they’re all masterpieces, too. Now, finding underrated albums that are also perfect is difficult, considering most exceptional decades-old albums that still hold up have found an audience in that time, but the following albums are either overshadowed by other releases from the artists in question, or they’re fairly well-loved when they should be exceptionally well-loved. And uh, that’s that. Onward and whatever.
8
‘On the Beach’ (1974)
Neil Young
Neil Young was super prolific during the 1970s, and most will argue that’s when he was at his peak, artistically. He might be more of a folk singer than a rock artist, but he definitely walked the line between the two, being at his heaviest with Rust Never Sleeps. As for his best album? There’s no definite pick, but two of the most popular/frequently cited are After the Gold Rush and Harvest.
Perhaps the string of good albums in a row has meant that a few of them don’t get quite as much love, with this potentially being the case for On the Beach. This is easily one of Young’s most emotional albums, to the point where it can be quite harrowing at times, especially that lengthy closing track, “Ambulance Blues.” Three of the eight songs here do have “Blues” in the title, which should clue you into it being a melancholic album. But it’s great and beautiful melancholy, and though it’s on the soft side as far as classic rock goes, it still qualifies, given most of the songs here have a folk/country rock sound going for them.
7
‘Raw Power’ (1973)
Iggy and The Stooges
The career of Iggy Pop is an endlessly fascinating one, since he helped define what would eventually become punk rock with The Stooges, then he had some fruitful collaborations with David Bowie, and then he also became well-known as an actor. He’s a pop culture icon who’s endured surprisingly well, in a similar vein to Keith Richards, perhaps, but one of his best albums – Raw Power – deserves a little more love.
It’s mixed in a near-deafening way, and listening to it feels like getting continually punched in the eardrums for a bit over half an hour.
It’s understandable, though, why Raw Power might not have resonated straight away. It is so heavy, loud, and – indeed – raw, even more than 50 years later. It’s mixed in a near-deafening way, and listening to it feels like getting continually punched in the eardrums for a bit over half an hour. But it also sounds amazing; it’s not just mindless noise, because the songs here are really well-written and punchy. It’s wild that something this old still sounds like this, and has the kind of impact it does, but that’s just Raw Power for you. If you took this album back in time to the Victorian era, and played it for people, there would probably be casualties.
6
‘Quadrophenia’ (1973)
The Who
Okay, sure, Quadrophenia is quite well-liked, and most people would probably place it at #3 if they were to rank albums by The Who. But therein lies the problem. Tommy and (especially) Who’s Next are both great, but Quadrophenia is the band’s best album, and those who have woken up to this fact are tired of pretending it’s not. It’s a better concept album than Tommy, it’s more consistent than Who’s Next, and its ambition is still staggering to behold to this day.
Quadrophenia goes so damn big, and does it so damn well. It’s a grand coming-of-age story about alienation, loneliness, mental illness, and conformity, but even if you don’t want to break down the lyrics, the whole album just sounds great enough to be a classic for that alone. It’s got some standout tracks, sure (namely, “The Real Me” and “Love, Reign O’er Me”), but it’s best listened to from front to back, which is surprisingly easy to do, since none of the 17 tracks here miss the mark.
5
‘Selling England by the Pound’ (1973)
Genesis
Another album that might only just fit into the definition of classic rock, Selling England by the Pound is probably the best Genesis album, but it’s not the most popular. The band’s history is a fascinating one, since in the 1970s, they were very weird and niche, and then Peter Gabriel left the band before the end of the decade, and Phil Collins took over, kind of, and then Genesis ended up being a very different sort of band post-Gabriel, and into the 1980s, as well as a more approachable/popular one, too.
So, Selling England by the Pound is being included here because it comes from that weird Genesis era that is understandably a little less popular, but does still deserve a bit more love. This is psychedelic, sometimes rambling, and undeniably surreal stuff, but it’s also uniquely intoxicating. The whole album is a great one to just fall into and get lost in. You might not have any answers as to what it all might mean once you come out the other end, but you’ll have experienced something great, at the very least.
4
‘Peter Gabriel 3’ (1980)
Peter Gabriel
What did Peter Gabriel get up to after Genesis, you might ask? Some pretty great stuff, it turns out. His most famous album is indeed more popular and well-known than anything he did with Genesis: 1986’s So. That one had “Sledgehammer” on it, which is a great song with an even greater music video, and it also contained “In Your Eyes” (heard in Say Anything, quite famously), as well as the Kate Bush duet “Don’t Give Up.”
But enough about So. Gabriel probably peaked as an artist with his third self-titled album, released in 1980… or potentially the score to The Last Temptation of Christ, which was released as Passion. But that one wasn’t really rock, whereas Peter Gabriel 3 is art rock, and so it’s being counted here as a classic rock album. It’s a little out there, and also pretty unsettling/anxiety-inducing at times, but it’s also an incredibly consistent album, and one that has held up immensely well more than four decades on from release.
3
‘Tim’ (1985)
The Replacements
Right on the line of being considered classic rock, The Replacements‘ Tim did come about 40 years ago, at the time of writing, and that’s the cut-off, for present purposes. It’s undeniably rock music, with a bit of a punk kick, all the while also being melodic and kind of poppy, too. It gets the balance right, and that makes it a super satisfying listen.
There are anthemic songs here that are truly energizing (“Hold My Life”), big songs that are also a bit melancholic (“Left of the Dial”), and then an outright downer of a song to conclude things, “Ambulance Blues” style (“Here Comes a Regular”). All albums by The Replacements are underrated, since they’re a scrappy and generally underrated band, but Tim especially so, since the album before it, Let It Be, is usually considered the band’s greatest. And it is great, of course, but Tim might be even better. You can’t really go wrong with the following album (Pleased to Meet Me) either.
2
‘The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle’ (1973)
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen’s second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, was also his first great one. And it does get a bit overshadowed by the third album of his, the absolutely perfect Born to Run, but The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle deserves a similar amount of love, especially since it contains tracks like “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” and “New York City Serenade.”
It’s not quite as much of a true “rock” album as either Born to Run or Born in the U.S.A., but this one still has enough of a rock sound to qualify as classic rock. And it is undeniably a classic, which might be the main thing, even if there are various other Springsteen albums that tend to get championed a little more. Just don’t overlook this one; that’s the main thing to take away from all this.
1
‘Animals’ (1977)
Pink Floyd
It’s a stretch to call Pink Floyd underrated in the traditional sense, since albums like The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall (which later became a movie) are some of the most well-loved in rock history. Wish You Were Here is also close to as iconic as those two, but then Animals is kind of a dark horse; loved by fans, and eventually held in high regard by critics, but certainly a more difficult and less approachable album overall.
It’s hard to get on the same level as this album initially, and maybe you’re not really going to want to, considering how dark and oppressive this one is. The Dark Side of the Moon is similarly grim in parts, but it’s not as persistently bleak or nightmarish as Animals. But once Animals does click, it truly emerges as one of the band’s very best, and it’s worthy of the same kind of praise the other established classic Pink Floyd albums from the 1970s tend to get.
