This heading will occur on recordings other than traditional albums in which an act puts current material together in a studio setting and then packages it together as an album. Specialty recordings include anthologies, live recordings, archival collections, box sets, cast albums, and soundtracks.

Recorded:

date recorded, if a live album, or dates recorded if an archival or greatest hits collection

Released:

date of release ¹

¹ In the event that several similar albums have been documented on one page, a footnote indicates which version of an album this refers to.

Rating:

The star rating is anywhere from zero to five stars, with five being the best. ½ star ratings are also given. Ratings come from an average of multiple ratings sources, such as magazines (Blender, Q, Rolling Stone), music sellers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, CD Universe), online sources (All Music Guide, msn, and yahoo), and books of album reviews.

Genre:

usually a general heading (like rock or blues) with a sub-category as well (such as classic rock or R&B > Motown)

Quotable:

An excerpt from one of the reviews cited for the album that sums it up.

Album Tracks:

• Song Title (may include writer(s) names) and [length of song]

Sales (in millions):

U.S. sales, generally based on the RIAA
U.K. sales
European sales, as determined by IFPI
combined totals of above or worldwide estimates from any number of sources

Peak:

peak position on U.S. Billboard magazine’s Top 200 Albums chart
peak position on U.K. album charts

Singles/Hit Songs:

• Title of Song (date released or charted) #rank(s) on various charts.

The following charts are referenced:

• US: Billboard pop charts
• UK: UK pop charts
• AC: Billboard adult contemporary charts
• CW: Billboard country charts
• RB: Billboard R&B/rap charts
• AR: Billboard album rock charts
• MR: Billboard modern rock (or alternative rock) charts
• AA: Billboard adult alternative charts

Also included are details about songs’ sales figures (in millions; example: 1.0 m) and airplay (also in millions).

Also, if you click on the “Singles/Hit Songs” heading on a page, it will pull up a pop-up window reminding you what the different codes represent.

Notes:

Generally, this will be a comment about special editions of the album that have been released, such as reissues that include bonus tracks.

Awards:

This section showcases major honors and distinctions, such as album of the year awards or appearances on best-of-all-time lists. These are all showcased with various buttons (see the albums home page for more details) showing a logo to represent the organization. Clicking on that button will take you to a page offering more detail about that award or list.

Review:

First it should be noted that “albums” is a term used to encompass a variety of recorded works including album-length classical works, cast albums, soundtracks, live recordings, compilations, box sets, archival collections, and studio efforts.

In this section of every album page is the album review. However, before we get to an explanation of the unique approach I’ve taken for the album review, let’s get into some background about how this site came about in the first place.

At the close of the 20th century, best-of-all-time lists of anything and everything were as common as warning cries that all the computers in the world were going to come crashing down because of the Y2K bug. I accumulated the best-of music lists in a database along with album ratings, sales figures, chart peaks, awards won, etc. in the hopes of compiling a best-of-the-best list a few months into the year 2000. Well, now it’s well into the next millennium and the project has clearly become an on-going endeavor.

I eventually fueled those results into the creation of this website, most notably the chronological listing of the 1000 greatest albums of all time. Those results, as well as a ranked top 100, my own personal top 100, and some select top 100 lists from noted publications and resources, all appear as links under the “Awards” section at the bottom of the left hand column.

Okay, so now the album review info. This part of each album page is devoted to an album review. However, in the same spirit as the best-of-the-best DMDB album list, the album reviews capture the best-of-the-best in reviews. Instead of writing a personal reflection on the album, I have approached the review research-paper style. In other words, I quote excerpts from other reviews, citing them parenthetically, and pulling the whole thing together into what is, hopefully, a cohesive review pieced together from others more knowledgable than me.

Review Source(s):

• So then after piecing together said review, the sources, generally with Web links, are listed down here so that you can access the original reviews at your leisure.

Links could include recording act’s DMDB page, the albums that came before and after this one, and other albums and acts that might be related to this album page.

This space is for videos for songs featured on the album. In most cases, these are embedded into the page, but in some instances it may be a link that takes you offsite.

Click on box above to check out the DMDB on Facebook. Also, many pages now have a feature here where you click to “like” the page on Facebook.

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Last updated March 25, 2011 (individualized for each page).