Best Albums of 1971
Ranked by our critic's grades, best first.
What's Going OnThe record that turned a hit factory into an art form, and still the most humane protest album in American music.Read the review
BlueTen songs, almost no band, and a level of disclosure that made other songwriters nervous for a decade.
MeddleEchoes is where this band finally becomes itself, and the rest of the record earns its keep too.
Elvis Country (I'm 10,000 Years Old)A proper country album made at speed in Nashville, with a strange looped fragment stitched between every track.
People Like UsA contractual reunion three years too late, recorded largely apart, and it sounds exactly like that.