In September of 1992, I bought my first two CDs. One was Check Your Head by the Beastie Boys, and the other was the Singles soundtrack. I was 14 years old. Yesterday, I bought six more CDs — mostly off-peak Van Morrison albums — adding to a collection that I have never counted, for the number would induce an untold mix of emotions.
Buying CDs, aside from eating and sleeping, is the one thing I have done consistently for the past 33 years. I bought CDs when everybody in the world was forced to buy CDs to hear music. And I bought CDs when I was among a small number of physical-media enthusiasts (you might refer to us as “freaks”) who pursued this hobby (is that the right word?) by choice. I am a dedicated fan of the format. I think they sound good. I think they look good. I enjoy the experience of shopping for them. And my feelings about these things have only grown fonder as CD collecting has become a niche pursuit.
One could argue my life-long obsession has been pointless. But that one person would be wrong. Because it’s all been leading up to this very column, on the most “CD album” albums ever.
The idea is to talk about albums that are best suited for the CD format. In the same way that certain albums are best suited for vinyl, and no albums are ideal for streaming, some albums are meant to be heard on compact disc. Or so I will argue for the next 6,500 words. If I don’t pull this off, my life has been a failure. Wish me luck.
PRE-LIST ENTERTAINMENT: JAMES GANDOLFINI OWNED DOOKIE ON VINYL
You might remember this story. It was August of 2020. The summer of the COVID lockdown. Everyone was addicted to social media — more than usual, even — and desperate for distraction from omnipresent tedium. Enter Michael Imperioli, TV’s Chris-tapha from The Sopranos, who was reminiscing about his late co-star one day on Instagram. “What kind of music was Jim into?” someone asked. “Green Day,” was the reply. Not a totally surprising answer given that James Gandolfini was a white guy in his 30s for the entirety of the 1990s. But the IG hordes nevertheless were incredulous. “He would play the vinyl of Dookie in his trailer at work,” Imperioli insisted.
For the next several days, it was a viral story. Tony Soprano was a pop-punk fan! A ridiculous juxtaposition, for sure, though it also made the beloved departed actor that much more endearing. Imperioli milked the publicity by sharing more behind-the-scenes Gandolfini/Green Day gossip, revealing that his good friend Jim loved Dookie so much that he named his dog after the mega-selling album. Priceless! Who could imagine such a thing?
But I didn’t care about any of that. Not that I was above such matters. I am not claiming intellectual superiority over online celebrity fodder. This story, in fact, has stuck in my brain far longer than it has (I’m guessing) for anyone else on the planet. But not because it’s funny to imagine James Gandolfini warming up for an emotional scene by jamming to “Longview.” What concerns me — okay, it actually bothers me, I’ll sadly admit — is the thought of James Gandolfini warming up for an emotional scene by jamming to “Longview” on vinyl.
On vinyl? Dookie? Dookie on vinyl? Jim, I know you have been dead for 11 years now, but what are we doing here? Dookie is not an album you play on vinyl. Everybody knows that Dookie is an album you play ON COMPACT DISC!
I know it’s possible to play Dookie on vinyl. You can purchase it on “baby blue” vinyl, apparently. Or, if you really feel like being swindled, you can play it on five different pieces of regular vinyl, courtesy of the 30th anniversary box set. But if you do this — I mean this respectfully — you are a sucker who has been brainwashed by the out-of-control, money-drunk vinyl industry. (Big Vinyl, if you will.)
It’s one thing if you want to listen to a vintage Blue Note label jazz LP from the 1950s. Or the Crosby, Stills, And Nash album you got from your parents. Or that copy of Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream & Other Delights you purchased for $30 before realizing that Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream & Other Delights used to go for $1 at every Salvation Army store in the country. All those albums make sense on vinyl, because they originated during the vinyl era. But Dookie was released in 1994, the heart of the COMPACT DISC era. Millions of people bought it on compact disc, probably at the mall, and they stuck it in their big ol’ CD racks at home. Or in the glove compartments of their cars. Or in boxes currently collecting dust in storage lockers. Wherever that album is, Dookie was sold on COMPACT DISC. Not on vinyl. NOT ON VINYL!
The vinyl version is an expensive affectation designed to separate gullible (sorry) consumers from their hard-earned money 30 years after the fact. Listening to Dookie on vinyl is like paying $30 to watch a “silent movie” version of The Jazz Singer, because the first talkie in film history is “cooler” or “looks better” without audible dialogue.
Clearly, I have kept my emotions in check about this until now. But just to be clear: I don’t like this! It devalues the compact disc, my personal favorite physical music format, and it obscures the CD era of music, which lasts roughly the late ’80s to the early ’00s. It’s the worst Tony Soprano-adjacent crime since the murder of Adriana La Cerva. And I won’t stand for it. It’s high time the CD — and the format’s rich musical history — was celebrated.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to serve up some CD justice.
30. Aerosmith — Big Ones (1994)
Just to reiterate an essential point: This is not a list of “best” CD albums. It’s a list of “most” CD albums, as in albums that make the most sense in the CD format. Or, in some cases, only make sense in the CD format. Many of the albums discussed here also happen to be great. But that greatness is only coincidental. Greatness isn’t my primary concern. Most-ness is.
As we proceed, there will be numerous greatest hits albums under discussion. While they did not originate in the CD era, the “greatest hits” format was best suited for this time. Unlike vinyl, CDs made it easy for hits-minded listeners to skip around freely — even past other hits — to the exact songs they wanted to hear. And before streaming, greatest hits albums were the best way to consume playlists that were all killer and no filler.
The irony is that the CD was a durable vessel which — if you didn’t scratch it — was supposed to last for decades. And yet record labels at the time routinely churned out greatest hits records for the same artists, over and over again, and made boatloads of money in the process. One of the most egregious examples relates to one of the most egregious bands in rock history, Aerosmith. And the most egregious of all their career compilations has to be the charmingly titled Big Ones.
There have been 15 (!) Aerosmith greatest hits albums in all, an incredible statistic considering there are (I’m being generous because I actually like Aerosmith) about 15 genuinely good Aerosmith tunes. The first compilation, 1980’s Aerosmith’s Greatest Hits, contains many of them. Big Ones came out 14 years later, and it sticks mainly to the three blockbuster Aerosmith albums that preceded it — 1987’s Permanent Vacation, 1989’s Pump, and 1993’s Get A Grip. Meaning that Big Ones covers the Aerosmith albums that the average kid in 1994 was most likely to already own. There were also two unreleased songs and a track from The Beavis And Butt-Head Experience, a tie-in to the popular MTV show released one year prior. But the enterprise was transparently half-assed, which was telegraphed by the laughably half-assed album cover.
That did not stop Big Ones from going four-times platinum, which just goes to show that rock fans at the time were not content to own just one copy of “Dude (Looks Like A Lady).”
29. Chumbawamba — Tubthumper (1997)
Let me repeat: Big Ones went four-times platinum. And that Beavis And Butt-Head album I mentioned went double platinum. Preposterous sales figures are an important part of CD history. Those numbers are to CDs what that one asteroid was to the dinosaurs — a dazzling display that ultimately proved fatal.
Whenever people talk about how much CDs suck, they always dwell on the same phenomenon of overpaying for a whole album that only had one song they liked. And, often, it was a song they liked for only a short period of time, until they bought the CD and played it on repeat for a week. Then they hated the song, and then they hated themselves for buying the CD.
There are many examples of albums that sold millions of copies because people only wanted one song. But I can’t think of a better one — or one that is funnier — than Chumbawamba’s Tubthumper. It’s the album that gave us the novelty late-’90s hit “Tumbthumping,” which lives on as a go-to track for obnoxious individuals who want to annoy bars-full of people by queuing it up 10 times in a row and then leaving.
I chose Tubthumper because of that song, and because of the aggressively ugly “fluorescent green plus background plus grotesque fluorescent purple baby in the foreground” album cover, and also because it sold 3.2 million copies in the United States. 3.2 million! Bob Dylan has never sold 3.2 million copies of any album. The members of Chumbawamba are chilling on a beach somewhere and sucking down banana daiquiris because of this CD.
28. Batman Forever: Music From The Motion Picture (1995)
I have lamented elsewhere about the demise of the “soundtrack to a film that has no business having a soundtrack” album. And while I didn’t make an explicit connection at the time, there’s no question that the decline of this phenomenon is linked with the downfall of CDs. Tying an album to a movie made financial sense in the ’90s, when you could slip on a banana peel and sell 500,000 CDs before your butt hit the floor. With the Batman franchise, there was a history of this going back to Prince’s soundtrack for the original 1989 film, an album that’s been called “underrated” so many times at this point that it might actually be overrated. But Batman Forever has a stronger “most CD” vibe, due to the combination of the third Batman movie having a junkier (in a good way!) feel and the surprisingly strong (if also dated) combination of artists on the tracklist. If the compact disc never existed, there never would have been an album starring Seal, Nick Cave, Brandy, U2, and The Offspring.
27. Tool — Undertow (1993)
Let me reiterate another important point: I adore CDs. I truly am here to praise the format, not bury it. I realize that I have done a lot of roasting so far. And there will be more jokes ahead. But you only kid the ones you love. And one thing I love about CDs is the lack of pretension. There’s none of the self-seriousness that seems to pervade conversations about vinyl. You can make jokes about CDs and nobody who likes CDs will be offended because being a CD fan is like cheering for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Nobody respects our team but us. Whereas my (good-natured!) jokes about vinyl have surely already been screenshotted and shared on the Steve Hoffman message board.
CDs are fun! That’s my point. And artists had fun with the format. Take Tool, one of the definitive “CD album” bands of all time. Tool is a funny band, and not always by accident. On their debut album, they did that thing bands sometimes did back then where you add a bunch of extra blank tracks to the end of a disc. In Tool’s case, there were 58 silent tracks, followed by a song (at No. 69!) called “Disgustipated.”
Do I think this is funny? In 2025, no. In 1993, when I was 16, sort of. But the most-ness here is obvious.
26. Metallica — Load (1996)
Tool was experimenting with the storage possibilities of the CD format. Metallica, meanwhile, was interested in maximizing that potential. “Bloated” is a commonly used adjective for big-time albums released in the late ’90s — from Oasis’ Be Here Now to Wu-Tang Clan’s Wu-Tang Forever — and that’s related to the 80-minute block of space that CDs afforded. And no band pushed that envelope further than Metallica on Load. At literally one second below 79 minutes, it’s the longest Metallica album and, allegedly, the longest album possible for a single mass-produced CD. The band later claimed (via an explanation posted on the back of the CD single release for “The Memory Remains”) that they had to shorten “The Outlaw Torn” by one minute because “the record company told us that we couldn’t go one second past 78:59 or your CDs wouldn’t play without potentially skipping.” Metallica was so proud of the album’s run time that they put a sticker on the front cover that simply read “78:59.” (Which means I am possibly underrating Load by putting it at No. 26 — it literally is the most CD you can have.)
25. Wilco — Being There (1996)
Here’s another thing I love about CDs: The hard plastic jewel case. I don’t care that they crack or that the teeth holding the CD in place are more fragile than kitten bones. That only adds to their delicate beauty. I like how the plastic case feels in my hand. And I like how a whole bunch of plastic cases look on a shelf. They feel and look like CDs, which in my mind means “perfect.” If I had all-encompassing power over the universe, I would put “make sure all CDs are enclosed in hard plastic jewel cases” on my Day 1 priorities list. And I would start with Being There, an album I love despite its self-hating packaging.
Being There is a CD album that Jeff Tweedy pretended was a vinyl album. Unlike Metallica, who squeezed as much music as possible on a single disc, Tweedy put Being There on two discs despite his album being two minutes shorter than Load. I actually don’t mind that part, as I think it works for the flow of the album. (It would have also been harder to justify putting two versions of “Outtasite (Outta Mind)” on the album if it were a single disc.) What I don’t like is that Being There pioneered the “CD packaged to look like a vinyl album” thing that many bands emulate now with their CD releases, in lieu of using the jewel case. I really hate this. It makes CDs harder to display on the shelf. Instead of the right-angle precision of the plastic jewel case, you have all manner of shapes and sizes that mess up the uniformity of the rows. Also, it makes them feel like mini-LPs, not CDs.
Repeat after me: Stop emulating vinyl! Vinyl is vinyl. CDs are CDs. Be yourself, CD albums!
(Special mention should also be made of Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy, which did the same “CD masquerading as vinyl” packaging but was also accompanied by an actual vinyl release that pre-dated the CD by two weeks. One could even argue — as I did — that this primed a generation to fetishize vinyl. For that reason, I couldn’t put Vitalogy on this list.)
24. Operation Ivy — Energy (1989)
Lest I spark a civil war over physical formats, I can admit that vinyl has its own aesthetic and sonic advantages. I also own a lot of vinyl myself, so it’s not like I’m some insanely bigoted CD supremacist. But I have fallen out of love with the format, and there are three reasons why: 1) Prices have gotten stupidly out of hand; 2) I moved three times in the mid-2010s, and practically broke my back lugging all those records around; 3) I remembered that I grew up in the CD era, and if I’m going to have a nostalgic attachment to a physical music format, I want it to be my nostalgia, not secondhand nostalgia passed down from somebody else.
Here’s some nostalgia specific to CDs: The car CD. This is a CD that, naturally, lives in your car. You keep it there, you listen to it there, and you associate the music with that environment. Actually, it’s more than nostalgia. Portability is a key advantage of the CD. My view on this is skewed, perhaps, because I happen to own vehicles that still have CD players. But listening to a CD at full volume in a car is the peak of listening performance. Take a hike with your Bluetooth and iPhone, sir or ma’am. They simply cannot compete with the audio quality — clarity, volume, power — of a car CD.
A subgenre of the car CD, if you’re in high school, it’s the CD in somebody’s car, the one you hear every day without owning it yourself. For me, that “high school car CD” album was Operation Ivy’s Energy. (You may substitute your own version of this CD in this spot.) This CD really qualifies because not only did I not own it myself, I would never own it under normal circumstances. Energy fell outside my regular taste in music at the time. My knowledge of Op Ivy is due entirely to the “high school car CD” captive audience aspect. I did end up buying it later on, and it became the cornerstone of my minuscule ska-punk library. But I swear it sounded better in any number of the cars steered by members of my high school friend group in the mid-’90s, when I heard it constantly with the windows rolled down under a fat cloud of pot smoke.
I can’t really say whether I think this album is great. Energy is not an album I heard. It’s an album that happened to me. It’s a CD that happened to me.
23. Adam Sandler — They’re All Gonna Laugh At You! (1993)
Like the “car CD” album, this one is tied to a specific setting. It’s a “CD you play on headphones so it’s not taken away from you” album. I have not played They’re All Gonna Laugh At You! in more than 30 years, but I can hear the sketches in my head as I peruse the tracklist. “Fatty McGee,” Toll Booth Willie,” “At A Medium Pace” — just looking at those words makes me paranoid that my mother is about to tap me on the shoulder and ask what I’m listening to.
Apparently, you can buy this on vinyl now, which just strikes me as sad. Listening to “The Beating Of A High School Spanish Teacher” on vinyl does not seem like a good time. It sounds like a symptom of an impending mid-life crisis.
22. Bob Marley And The Wailers — Legend (1984)
Another setting-specific CD — the “dorm room staple” CD. A greatest hits album, but on a classier stratum than Big Ones. It was a CD people bought because Bob Marley makes great music, obviously. But having Legend in your disc collection also meant that you were “into reggae.” No other reggae CDs were needed to communicate this. In the streaming era, you can become a remedial reggae appreciator in the space of an afternoon, just by reading Wikipedia and listening to some well-curated playlists. But back then, all you needed was Legend.
This is also an example of the rarest of all CDs: The “no skips” CD. A compact disc that can be played uninterrupted, resulting (on average) in anywhere from 30 minutes to 78 minutes and 59 minutes of continuous music. The shiniest of all circular unicorns with a hole through the middle. That’s Legend.
21. ABBA — Gold (1992)
The Swedish pop equivalent to Legend, and the other big “dorm room staple” greatest hits album CD. Millions of straight male rockists were converted to poptimism in the ’90s because they had crushes on beautiful women who owned this CD.
20. Big Star — #1 Record/Radio City (originally 1972 and ’73, CD issued in 1992)
Here is where I blatantly contradict myself about “appropriate” formats. The first two Big Star records came out in the early 1970s. They are, undeniably, vinyl albums. Only nobody bought Big Star records when they originally came out. Big Star didn’t become famous among indie and alternative fans until 20 years later, when the original vinyl editions were long out of print. Therefore, a lot of people (myself included) first encountered one of America’s finest power pop bands via a reissue that packaged #1 Record and Radio City together on one disc. The front cover was nondescript and kind of ugly, and the (mostly purple) back cover was even worse. But the actual disc — which I found in a used CD store, a purchase I still remember making — contained some of the most heartbreaking songs of my damn life.
This happened with countless albums from the ’60s and ’70s that are now considered classics, but for many years were nearly impossible to find, especially if you didn’t live in a town with a lot of record stores. Your best bet was finding a low-budget reissue that delivered high value (two albums on one CD!) in lieu of bells and whistles like comprehensive liner notes and attractive covers. For a long time, this was the only way to hear Big Star.
19. Elvis Costello — My Aim Is True (1993 Rykodisc Version)
Just as some artists were endlessly anthologized on greatest hits collections in the CD era, others had their proper albums reissued multiple times with various bonus tracks. Only sometimes those bonus tracks didn’t carry over to subsequent reissues, which meant you couldn’t discard your old CD when buying the same album again. In my experience, Elvis Costello is the quintessential example of this type of artist. I originally bought his 1977 debut album in high school, when I was digging into canonical singer-songwriters for the first time. The “current” CD version at the time was issued by Rykodisc in 1993, and my favorite bonus track was “Imagination (Is A Powerful Deceiver),” a song that predates the My Aim Is True material.
I have a sentimental attachment to that particular CD incarnation, even though “Imagination” also appears on the 2001 reissue put out by Rhino. That version is actually a double disc and presumably has better packaging than the Rykodisc one. (The “teeth” in the jewel cases always break off on Rykodisc releases from that period.) However, “Imagination” is not included on the 2007 “deluxe” edition of My Aim Is True, which makes me question the meaning of “deluxe.” But because that’s the most recent version of the album, you don’t get “Imagination” on streaming platforms, either. So, the broken-teeth Rykodisc version I bought 30 years ago is even more valuable now.
(Yes, I know you can hear “Imagination” on YouTube. This does not negate my larger point, and I suspect that anyone who just sat through the extremely arcane discussion of early ’90s Rykodisc packaging would agree.)
18. De La Soul — 3 Feet High And Rising (1989)
Until March of 2023, the entirety of De La Soul’s catalog wasn’t available on streaming platforms, due to protracted legal battles over sample clearances. This was an especially big problem for their iconic debut album, which is heralded — along with another hip-hop landmark released in 1989, Paul’s Boutique by The Beastie Boys — as one of the most creative and entertaining examples of samples-based music in pop history. For the generation raised on Spotify, access to one of the greatest rap records ever made was restricted, to the point where 3 Feet High And Rising practically didn’t exist for listeners of a certain age.
Of course, for those of us who owned 3 Feet High And Rising on CD, this was never a problem. Nor is it a problem for fans of all the great samples-driven rap masterpieces from the CD era. If you have the disc, those albums have always existed as they are, and there’s zero chance of the music being taken away or diluted by subsequent legal challenges in the future.
17. Snoop Dogg — Doggystyle (1993)
An all-time “car CD” album, without question. Every friend group in the ’90s (and possibly beyond?) needed at least one person to have Doggystyle at the ready at all times. Also, along with 3 Feet High And Rising, it’s a milestone release for hip-hop “between song” skits. The hip-hop album skit is an oft-maligned art form, but it nevertheless thrived during the CD era. The extra storage space was conducive to this relatively inessential adjunct content. But the ability to skip around freely also, surprisingly, played to the benefit of these tracks. While it’s true that most people skipped over the skits, there were instances when listeners skipped to these skits, particularly if they were extra dirty in a memorable way. The absolute classic track in that regard is “W Balls,” the 36-second interlude between “Gin And Juice” and “The Shiznit” on Doggystyle, which surely must be counted as the Mona Lisa of hip-hop skits.
16. Billy Joel — 52nd Street (originally 1978, CD issued in 1982)
Time for some history: This is the first compact disc ever to be commercially released. Richard Strauss’ Eine Alpensinfonie and ABBA’s The Visitors were technically manufactured first, but 52nd Street was the first one to arrive in stores. It makes sense: Billy Joel was one of the biggest pop stars of the time, and he appealed specifically to an upwardly mobile “adult” audience most likely to purchase music in an expensive new format. Also, 52nd Street was a proven seller that had won the Grammy for Album Of The Year a few years earlier.
This was also the record where Joel embraced a jazzier, more “serious” sound. On the back cover, he poses with a trumpet, so you know you’re in for a jazz odyssey. I once described it as his Steely Dan record, so hearing “Zanzibar” in the most perfect sound imaginable in the early ’80s must have been a heady experience. (I also imagine that many yuppies snorted cocaine off of Billy’s trumpet.)
15. NSYNC — No Strings Attached (2000)
The year 2000 represents the zenith of CD sales in America, with more than 900 discs shipped that year. And this was the best-selling compact disc during the biggest year in CD history, with 9.94 million units sold (or about 10 percent of all sales in America). Napster was already in full swing, so it’s likely that number would have been much higher if the internet didn’t exist. But even with the digital skim off the top of the music industry’s profits, No Strings Attached belongs on a “most CD” list by virtue of it being one of the discs with the most CD copies out in the world.
14. Garth Brooks — The Limited Series (2005)
The late ’90s and early ’00s are the steroids era of the music business, only the steroids are CDs and Mark McGwire is Garth Brooks. Nobody cared more about his sales statistics — or did more to juice those numbers — than Garth. Like McGwire, he was already a home run hitter before he started juicing. Albums like No Fences and Ropin’ The Wind moved more CDs in the early ’90s than a suburban Sam Goody outlet, going platinum dozens of times between them. But Garth really started slinging CDs after he made an exclusive deal with Walmart and Sam’s Club in 2005, issuing a discount-priced box set, The Limited Series. He previously put out another box set called The Limited Series in 1998 that contained all his albums. And, years later, he put out yet another box called The Limited Series in partnership with Bass Bro Shops.
“Limited,” it appears, is another word with a rather nebulous definition in CD history. But Garth’s intentions were clear: When you sell a single box set with five or six discs contained within, each sale is counted five or six times, depending on the number of discs. To reference the Billy Joel song Garth Brooks covered on No Fences, it was shameless sales manipulation. But it was also genius, given Garth’s ability to constantly find new retailers whose customer bases are still willing to buy Garth Brooks CDs like it’s 1992.
13. Norah Jones — Come Away With Me (2002)
The Garth Brooks of selling CDs at Starbucks. The mellow, jazzy pop of Norah Jones’ cozily decaffeinated debut album has been described/dismissed so often as “Starbucks music” that some might not remember that CD copies of Come Away With Me were literally sold at the stores’ front counters. And it was a good deal — just $9.99 per disc, much cheaper than what the dwindling number of outlets hawking CDs were charging at the time. While specific numbers for CDs sold via Starbucks are hard to track down, it’s fair to assume that the combination of corporate coffeehouse vibes and readily available discs well-positioned for impulse buys helped Come Away With Me go platinum an incredible 27 times.
12. Adele — 25 (2015)
If you love CDs, you have to give it up to Adele for making the format briefly relevant again in the pop world. Upon the release of her third record, she initially refused to make it available on streaming platforms. (She later relented in 2016.) If you wanted 25, you had to purchase a download, a vinyl copy, or a CD. Incredibly, many chose the third option. Columbia Records shipped 3.6 million CDs in the United States alone, the greatest number of discs for any album since No Strings Attached 15 years earlier. One million more discs were shipped in the UK. This, by default, makes 25 the most “car CD” album of the 2010s. Though “minivan CD” would probably be more accurate.
11. Huey Lewis And The News — Fore! (1986)
I had to include something from Mary Harron’s American Psycho, given that it’s the movie where several CDs gave critical, Oscar-worthy performances. And the Daniel Day-Lewis of the bunch has to be Fore!, a co-star of the famous “Christian Bale chops up Jared Leto with an axe” scene. However, I must make a small caveat: Fore! was among the first cassettes I ever owned. I have never actually personally owned Fore! on CD. So, while I acknowledge the cultural significance of the Fore! CD, it does not resonate with me on a tactile level. Therefore, I’m putting it just outside the top 10.
10. Flaming Lips — Zaireeka (1997)
This one, meanwhile, had to make the top 10 of “most” CDs, as Zaireeka has a “most CD” concept and it’s also among the “most” referenced CD punchlines. For the uninitiated: Zaireeka was conceived as a four-CD album in which each disc contained different elements of the same songs. So the only way to hear the “whole” song was to play all four discs simultaneously. Some people attempted this, and many more people joked about doing this. I recall being at parties (or just small gatherings) in college where someone would bring up doing the Zaireeka experiment in a context that actually meant “we are all far too drunk and/or stoned to literally attempt the Zaireeka experiment.” (Nobody actually owned this CD, for starters.) Later, when file sharing was commonplace, you could download a “mixed” version of Zaireeka where you could hear all the songs properly without playing all four CDs. But that ultimately felt anticlimactic. Zaireeka was meant to be a funny idea in theory that was slightly funnier as an actual album you never literally put on.
9. Blink-182 — Take Off Your Pants And Jacket (2001)
Along with Eminem’s The Eminem Show and 3 Doors Down’s Away From The Sun, this is commonly listed as one of the blockbuster albums that were leaked to the internet in the early aughts from the same North Carolina compact-disc manufacturing plant. As detailed by journalist Stephen Witt in his 2015 book How Music Got Free: The End Of An Industry, The Turn Of The Century, And The Patient Zero Of Piracy, all it took was one opportunistic employee with a duffel bag to completely undo the “CD steroid” era in music.
Take Off Your Pants And Jacket is a particularly apt signifier of this unceremonious crash-and-burn climax to a depraved and decadent time — a very successful Blink-182 album with a stupid name, one that had some hits but also a record no fan would ever consider their best work. If ever there was a CD that “most” deserved to be stolen, it was this one.
8. Kenny G — Breathless (1992)
Let’s go back to the glory years. In Penny Lane’s fine 2021 documentary Listening To Kenny G, a panel of experts attempt to answer a question asked by countless music critics and jazz aficionados: Why did this poodle-haired saxophonist sell so many CDs in the ’90s? Lane admirably explores the cultural factors that enabled Kenny G’s massive popularity and insightfully interrogates the nature of “good” taste and how such matters are constantly evolving. The film, however, does not address what was (in my view) the primary (CD-related) driver of Kenny G’s economic success.
The compact disc is a physical object. It is designed to play music. But it also is something that can be wrapped, placed in an attractive bag, or in some other way presented by one person to another. It is a tangible manifestation of how capitalism is used to demonstrate one’s personal affection for a friend or family member. Actually, in the case of Kenny G, a CD was perfect only for a family member, specifically an aunt or grandparent, who was otherwise impossible to shop for.
That is why Kenny G flourished — his CDs were no-brainer gifts for relatives with no discernible interests or hobbies. It didn’t matter if the relative in question normally “wasn’t into jazz.” Kenny G wasn’t really jazz anyway. His CD was an object you could wrap or place in an attractive bag, and that’s what mattered.
With Breathless, his sixth studio album, Kenny got hip to this. It came out one week before Thanksgiving, just in time for the holiday shopping season. It went on to sell 12 million copies in the US. By his next record, 1994’s Miracles: The Holiday Album, he embraced this overtly.
7. Eric Clapton — Unplugged (1992)
Because dads in the early ’90s needed CD gifts, too.
6. Dire Straits — Brothers In Arms (1985)
The first CD to sell one million copies. It actually outsold the vinyl version in the mid-’80s, which in my book justifies the rock-star headbands Mark Knopfler wore in the world’s arenas and stadiums. It was also among the first all-digital recordings, which means that playing it on vinyl feels wrong, like staring at a JPEG that’s been carved into a stone tablet. But listening to Brothers In Arms on compact disc is like a full-body massage for your ears. It sounds immaculate, and all of those songs are good. (It is the original “no skip” compact disc.) I own two CD copies. One of them is in the family minivan, the ideal setting for Brother In Arms, especially the “chill” side two. (Not that CDs have “sides,” of course. That is the one remnant of vinyl culture I’ll allow here.)
5. Now That’s What I Call Music! 3 (1999)
It was December of 1999. The Napster-addled barbarians were at the gate but hadn’t stormed the castle yet. Y2K loomed, and perhaps the gluttonous titans of industry believed that the world was about to end anyway. So why not make some hay? You won’t find a better soundtrack for this “decadent and depraved” CD epoch than the third volume of the Now That’s What I Call Music! series.
They’re all here — Smash Mouth’s “All Star,” Fatboy Slim’s “The Rockafeller Skank,” Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie,” Lenny Kravitz’s “American Woman,” my personal most hated ’90s pop song, and more. When the aliens arrive to the charred rubble of this planet in 2525, and attempt to understand our hallowed CD culture of the late 20th century, this will be a sacred text.
4. 20th Century Masters: Millennium Collection — The Best Of Alien Ant Farm (2008)
You might remember the 20th Century Masters: Millennium Collection series if you lingered in the shrinking CD sections at Target or Walmart a decade or so ago. It was a cheap way to collect the hits by a wide range of acts, from Neil Diamond to New Edition to Heavy D. And The Boyz to (of course) Aerosmith. And it was an easy money-making venture in the waning days of the CD era, right before streaming platforms achieved critical mass. Some CDs, naturally, sold better than others. It all depends on how essential their “hits” were. Which brings me to The Best Of Alien Ant Farm, six words that are funny by themselves, but then became side-splittingly hilarious when paired with the additional words 20th Century Masters: Millennium Collection. Seeing “Alien Ant Farm” alongside “20th Century Masters” in a supposedly non-sarcastic context is truly something to behold. But I shouldn’t laugh. It’s a testament to the CD era that even in the later stages, people wanted 10 more Alien Ant Farm songs in addition to their gimmicky cover of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal.”
3. Gin Blossoms — New Miserable Experience (1992)
The CD of which I own more copies than any other. I (still) love shopping in used CD stores, and I had a rule for many years that if I saw a copy of New Miserable Experience for less than $2, I would buy it. In time, I had enough copies to store New Miserable Experience in both family cars along with nearly room in the house. And I’m glad! Because if you’re in a car, and that car has a CD player, and you realize while on a road trip that New Miserable Experience is readily available, you will instantly thank yourself for spending that two bucks.
2. R.E.M. — Monster (1994)
Speaking of used CD stores …
I didn’t want to do this. Monster is commonly regarded as the most “used CD” CD of all time. Which I think is somewhat unfair and due in large part to how conspicuous the blaze orange packaging is. I would bet that Come Away With Me or Eric Clapton’s Unplugged or my beloved New Miserable Experience or just as common. They just blend in with the pack better. Though I don’t think being the most “used CD” CD is a bad thing, if it’s true. So long as it’s not used as shorthand for lack of quality. I love Monster, I love used CDs, and I will strenuously defend both against all haters.
Still… a reputation is a reputation. And I pictured Monster being high on this list at the start of making it, just as you surely did at the start of reading it. So it goes.
1. That One CD-R With The Most Personal Sentimental Value*
(*there’s way more than one)
Mixtapes are more romantic. Playlists are more convenient. But a CD-R with sentimental value will always mean the most to me. It doesn’t even have to be that sentimental. Could be a concert bootleg I burned 10 years ago by a band I no longer like. Could be a mix I made for a woman I haven’t talked to since college. Could be an advance of an album that made my best-of list in 2011 and haven’t played since. There are (at least) eight spindles in my office overflowing with CD-Rs like that. I know I don’t need them but I will never throw them away. There are the bookmarks of my life, highlighting long-forgotten passages that once seemed important enough to preserve on technology that promised sonic permanence. They represent the layers of skin I have shed over the years, only instead of letting them compose I have kept them forever, like a serial killer. Only I’m harmless, I swear. My only victims are the CDs I’ve collected in my whole life, which will be buried along with me when the time comes.
