Over the last few weeks, Apple Music has been unveiling its definitive list of the “100 Best Albums”– a series they have described as a “modern love letter to the records that have shaped the world we live and listen in today.” Each week the American tech and streaming giant released small portions of the said ranking, culminating with the final reveal of a top ten over the past few days, crowning The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as the best album of all time.
1. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill – Lauryn Hill#100BestAlbums pic.twitter.com/brcQZNLAyA
— Apple Music (@AppleMusic) May 22, 2024
On paper, this sounds like an incredibly ambitious task meant to spark some debate and conversation over past and present musical outputs and pit them against each other– which is typically the point of these types of lists. Ultimately, they are meant to get the general public talking, agreeing, and disagreeing, all for the purpose of engagement and love for the art form.
To be fair, even the most scientifically-devised music lists will draw the ire of people who simply feel that the given ranking should be different. After all, music is subjective and how we consume it remains personal to us as listeners.
Personally, whenever I come across these music lists, I try not to feel too strongly about them. However, after the full reveal of Apple’s list and having scanned through it, I could not help but notice a major issue: the complete lack of albums made by artists from non-Western countries and the exclusion of non-anglophone albums— with the exception of Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti. For there to be just one Spanish-language album is egregious in itself—especially when one could argue that it’s not even that artist’s best album.
76. Un Verano Sin Ti – Bad Bunny#100BestAlbums pic.twitter.com/kouqyOoroD
— Apple Music (@AppleMusic) May 15, 2024
Marketing this list as a love letter to albums that “shaped the world we live and listen in today” without including any music from outside the Western world feels disingenuous and disrespectful to artists who come from elsewhere. It feels as if Apple is saying that it does not value any artist whose achievements, impact, or success, stems from other regions.
At large, the list completely ignores the vast influence of K-pop groups and Reggaeton artists– who have catapulted their respective genres into global phenomenons– as well as the poetic genius of Arab musicians that have since been sampled for albums included on Apple’s own ranking.
What Apple has done is reinforce a biased narrative where Western culture is global culture and that art created elsewhere isn’t worthy of recognition. On top of that, even if one wanted to excuse the exclusion of music from other parts of the world, the fact that there isn’t a single album on there released before 1960 is mind-blowing. Music today would not even exist without artists like Ray Charles, Little Richard, and others who did not make the list.
Bad Bunny would not be able to thrive without the important work of Daddy Yankee’s 2004 album Barrio Fino, which is not on the list. The fact that Indian icon Ravi Shankar and Egypt’s greatest export Oum Kalthoum—who had a profound impact on hitmaker Robert Plant, lead singer of Led Zepplin– didn’t make the cut suggests that the list is completely devoid of any value.
I cannot help but think of all the artists from these regions who have partnerships with Apple Music right now, who will look at this ranking and not see their languages or cultures represented. I genuinely do not know what kind of message the streaming giant is now sending other than “We want to profit off you and your music, but we don’t think that is of any artistic value.”
Centring music made by Western artists and music performed in English feels incredibly outdated, shows a lack of knowledge and care for global music, and proudly says that it does not value global art in the way that it claims it does in its own marketing.
As someone who was recently tasked with creating a ranking of his own, I do understand that people will be upset with what you’ve created no matter what. That said, all we can do is ensure that we are as inclusive and specific as possible with the kind of tiering we put forward as debating where albums should or shouldn’t be ranked is irrelevant when entire parts of the music world remain largely ignored.
