Jazz-rock fusion would get a well-deserved bad name in the Seventies for its self-indulgent noodling, but that wasn’t how it started. Inspired by the visionary work of James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and Sly Stone, Miles Davis began incorporating funk grooves and electronic instruments into his music — first with the languid, contemplative In A Silent Way (still so cool that it was recently sampled by Diddy), and then on the double-LP monster Bitches Brew. Many called Miles a sell-out, but such critics obviously didn’t listen to the album’s complex, hypnotic cauldron of sound. Virtually every major fusion star played on Brew — Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Wayne Shorter — but even the best of them seldom matched its depth and intensity.
All-TIME 100 Albums
The album may be dead, but it's certainly not forgotten. TIME's critics have chosen the 100 greatest and most influential musical compilations since 1954.
Bitches Brew
Full List
1950s
1960s
- Abbey Road
- Bitches Brew
- Stand!
- Astral Weeks
- The Band
- At Folsom Prison
- Lady Soul
- The Beatles (“The White Album”)
- Are You Experienced
- I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You
- Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
- The Velvet Underground and Nico
- Blonde on Blonde
- Pet Sounds
- Revolver
- Highway 61 Revisited
- Otis Blue
- Rubber Soul
- A Love Supreme
- Live at the Apollo (1963)
- Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music
- King of the Delta Blues
1970s
- London Calling
- One Nation Under a Groove
- Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols
- Rumours
- Hotel California
- Ramones
- Songs in the Key of Life
- Born to Run
- Horses
- Red Headed Stranger
- Call Me
- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
- The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust
- Exile on Main Street
- Talking Book
- The Harder They Come
- Blue
- Coat of Many Colors
- Hunky Dory
- Led Zeppelin IV (a.k.a. Zoso)
- Paranoid
- Sticky Fingers
- Tapestry
- What’s Going On
- Who’s Next
- After the Gold Rush
- Bridge Over Troubled Water
- John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
- Moondance
1980s
- Like a Prayer
- Paul’s Boutique
- The Stone Roses
- It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
- Straight Outta Compton
- Straight Outta Compton
- Document
- Paid in Full
- Sign O’ The Times
- The Joshua Tree
- Graceland
- Master of Puppets
- Raising Hell
- Legend
- Stop Making Sense
- The Great Twenty-Eight
- Thriller
- Back in Black
- Purple Rain
1990s
2000s