Back In Black named best Oz album

THERE is nothing music fans love to hate on more than a greatest of all time list.

It is no great shock to find AC/DC’s world-conquering rock classic Back In Black on top of the new 200 Greatest Aussie Albums of All Time poll compiled by Rolling Stone Australia.

The lean, mean arena rock record remains the second highest selling album in the world, with more than 50 million copies sold since it was first released in 1980.

It continues to find new generations of fans with each anniversary reissue.

But every record below its No.1 perch on the Rolling Stone list is bound to provoke feelings.

Rolling Stone sought the input of 800 artists, producers, industry staffers and journalists for the list and the debate about inclusions and omissions will be exhaustive.

Editor Tyler Jenke cites his biggest surprises to make the cut were The Kid Laroi’s F--k Love (No.99) and Lime Cordiale’s 14 Steps To A Better You (No.198), both released in July 2020.

But Jenke said the records were career-defining, particularly when you consider Laroi recently scored a 2022 Grammy

nomination for Best New Artist.

“When they made the shortlist, we thought we had to be really careful about recency bias,” he said.

“But you listen to those records, and look at the impact they have had, and you realise it is a correct choice to have them there.”

The 200 Greatest Aussie Albums, like all contentious music lists, will split ranks across the art versus popularity divide.

Jenke said chart positions, sales, awards and other “metrics” that measured their local and international impact were weighed alongside artistic merit and cultural influence.

The weighting explains why popular and era-defining records from the ’80s and ’90s – INXS, John Farnham, Cold Chisel, Midnight Oil, Silverchair, Powderfinger and Crowded House – dominate the top 20.

The ’90s is the most featured decade, which reflects perhaps a lot of Generation X voters or its golden age for alternative rock and homegrown pop exploding on the global airwaves and concert stages, from Savage Garden (No.9) and Tina Arena (No.120) and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (No.13) to You Am I (No.11).

Cave was the most popular artist, with five albums with the Bad Seeds and one with the Birthday Party making the cut.

All five Silverchair albums figure on the list, which was finalised before the recent

Who Is Daniel Johns? podcast reignited the band’s catalogue on streaming services.

Kylie Minogue’s biggest selling album Fever (2001) was the highest ranked record by a female artist at No.10.