10 Perfect Albums That Never Went Platinum

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Britney, Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, even Vanilla Ice. We're used to mass-produced, mass-marketed pop music dominating record sales and stacking up platinum certifications in the process, but happily, there are a also a lot of great albums that do reach the million unit sold mark. Classic albums like Nirvana's Bleach and Eminem's Marshall Mathers LP have gone platinum, but there are, nonetheless, so many incredible records that have not got the recognition in terms of sales that they truly deserve. We're not just talking abour underground albums that a few heads think are great, but real, genuine greats—albums that could not be improved upon in any possible way.

Here are 10 perfect albums that never went platinum.

2. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Year Released: 2002

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's story is the epitome of indie music romanticism. It was an album completed in 2001 by Wilco, a band who up until that point, had been a pretty straight-shooting group that was mostly known for alt-country and rootsy rock. Their 1999 album Summerteeth was melodically gorgeous and sonically sharp, but it showed only subtle hints at what was to come. In 2001, the band completed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, an album that breathed slowly and deliberately, out of touch with the bounce that anything labeled "alt-country" could be associated with. The album was turned in to Reprise Records, and the label refused to release it as it was. Instead of going back to the studio, Wilco acquired the rights to the recordings and put the album out themselves. Soon after, Nonesuch Records heard the album and signed a deal with Wilco to officially release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in April of 2002. It was the band's most commercially successful album ever and also their most critically acclaimed.

Yankee Hotel Fotxtrot is an experimental album, but it is experimental in ways that modern albums rarely achieve. It's boundary-pushing in a way that isn't hyper-attentive to futuristic shifts in sound. It is ghostly and patient, finding important moments in timing shifts and brokenness, sometimes lost and lurking like it doesn't know what to do with itself next. But it always finds its footing, and the product is an album that feels classic and timeless while still managing to push the boundaries of modern music.

3. Madvillain - Madvillainy

Year Released: 2004

What more is there to say about MF DOOM and Madlib's magnum opus, Madvillainy? On the surface, it's not something that everyone can appreciate. I've tried time and time again to play this album to my mother and she doesn't get it, doesn't hear how Madlib's mad genius bleeds through his production and how DOOM's way with words is something to be admired and studied in universities. From that first line on "Accordion" to the very last verse on "Rhinestone Cowboy," DOOM takes us through the world of hip-hop's most entertaining villain over jazzy, dusty, wandering production that most rappers wouldn't know what to do with. It's not just an album, it's another planet, and the second Madvillainy clicks with you, it's an album you'll revisit frequently and without end—a true classic.

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4. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

Year Released: 2007

RIAA Classification: None

LCD Soundsystem's sophomore album was the pinnacle of the band's short but oh-so-sweet three album run. It's a perfect mixture of dance and rock, of self-confident sneering and uncertainty, of brilliantly high-end production and the endearing minutiae of everyday life. This is an album that rewards repeated plays, but has choruses and melodies that will get stuck in your head after one listen. This is an album that works best played through front to back in one sitting, but whose songs are each individual mini-classics of their own.

This is an album that, if any record deserves such a title, is perfect.

5. Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Year Released: 1998

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is not an album you'll love at first listen. It doesn't have songs that you'll soon be casually humming the tunes to while you're walking dow the street. But, if you spend some time with this album, if you let yourself get lost in its web of sonic and lyrical eccentricities, if you take the time to really listen to what Jeff Mangum is saying, you will likely be astounded. There is hope, there is loss, there is sadness, there is joy. There are surreal, bizarre moments and there are pure and simple truths in these songs, and while it may take a bit of time to get used to Mangum's sometimes strained voice and the strange mix of instrumentation, it's an investment worth making.

This is an album that means a huge amount to a huge number of people, it's an album glorified as one of the very best in the indie-rock canon, and with good reason. It's perfect.

6. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury

Year Released: 2006

Hell Hath No Fury was released four years after their debut release Lord Willin', and maybe the various label issues that the duo experienced actually helped them focus and crystalize the sense of sneering aggression into 12 relentlessly brilliant tracks of coke and luxury raps. Pusha T and Malice are at the top of their game throughout, dropping brash boasts alongside little personal details that remind us that these are complex young men and not just drug-dealing, gun-toting automatons. What really elevates this album from very good to perfect is the mind-blowing Neptunes production. Every single beat is a classic, and the variety in production, from the classic, crisp Neptunes minimalism of "Mr Me Too" to the all-out assault of "Trill" gives the record a cohesiveness that few rap albums will ever match.

7. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Year Released: 2010

Arcade Fire's third studio album saw the band using some of the best parts of their previous two albums, and at the same time taking risks by expanding their sound. In terms of content and lyrics, Win Butler turns inwards again, leaving Neon Bible's grand geo-political statements behind for what he knows best—the small ups and downs that define our lives. Arcade Fire captured, like no other band in recent times, the subtle interplay between suburban mundanity and excitement, the balance between the joys of youth and the fears of the unknown, and all whilst making driving, anthemic rock music.

This was the album that fully confirmed Arcade Fire's status as one of the biggest bands on the planet–a perfect album from a band at the peak of their powers.

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8. Daft Punk - Discovery

Year Released: 2001

If any Daft Punk album should have gone platinum in the 12 years since its release, it should be their sophomore effort, Discovery. The fact that it's essentially a soundtrack to their anime feature Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem (with each song being featured as one part of the film) should have warranted this, as the movie received loads of critical praise. Discovery is more than a soundtrack, though. If Homework was Daft Punk paying homage to the Chicago house music scene (while putting French house on the map), Discovery was the androids digging deeper, pulling in more influences from their past, including the sounds of the U.S. garage scene and disco.

Plus, Discovery plays like more of a complete album, with Daft Punk expressing more than club-banging tracks. There are producers in today's dance music scene that couldn't produce an album that could be varied enough to pull of including "One More Time" and "Something About Us." If you want the definitive Daft album, you'd need to look at Discovery as the album that blends much of where they've been into a whole mess of where they're going.

9. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

Year Released: 2007

Though it's Bon Iver's sophomore self-titled album that got all the Grammy accolades, 2007's For Emma, Forever Ago stole your heart first. Famously inspired by a breakup, a bout with mononucleosis and three months of solitude in a Wisconsin cabin, For Emma went on to become one of the most personal, cathartic albums of its decade. And it made for quite the first impression of the man behind the project: Justin Vernon. It didn't matter if you had never felt anything like the heartache and pain that Vernon expresses throughout this album—it resonated with you nonetheless. Listening to Vernon's voice break as he repeats "Someday my pain" at the end of "The Wolves (Act  I and II)" makes your body feel numb with helplessness because there's nothing you can do to console him. And you'll never forget the moment you first heard "Skinny Love," the song that really made a name for Bon Iver beyond the indie circuit.

This was also the album that put Justin Vernon on Kanye West's radar, starting a fruitful musical relationship that resulted in the brilliant "Lost in The World," as well as spots on "Monster," "I Can't Hold My Liquor," "I Am a God," and "I'm In It." For Emma, Forever Ago is an album that is important and inspirational, an album whose influence stretches from the bedrooms of a thousand heartbroken individuals to the mansions of Kanye West. It is a perfectly put together, cohesive record, and Justin Vernon is certainly someone who deserves to have a platinum plaque hanging from the wall of his Wisconsin cabin.

10. Mos Def - Black on Both Sides

Year Released: 1999

With Black Star, Talib Kweli and Mos Def bridged the gap between outsider underground backpack rap and that always elusive, impossible-to-define "real" hip-hop. Ultimately, these two things were probably more defined by the groups that claimed them than by the music itself. With Black Star, it became clear that there was a middle ground between gritty NYC rap and conscious, intellectually stimulating content. Mos Def took it a step further with Black On Both Sides, commenting on race, politics, and culture, but he did it while keeping the focus on creativity. It never felt like preaching, because the musicality of Black On Both Sides is as important to the album's impact as any social or political statement the album was making. Maybe those two things are inseparable, and maybe they should be—while plenty of rappers tried to get a message across by preaching, Mos Def did it by creating. It's not always what you say, it's how you choose to say it.

11. Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise

Year Released: 2005

When Sufjan Stevens committed himself to making a full-length album dedicated to each of the fifty United States, there was no telling what the project would produce. Many assumed Michigan, the album for his home state, would be the apex of the series, but we were wrong. When Stevens released the second album of that project, Illinoise, in 2005, it changed everything. Before then, we were used to one idea of the concept album being a narrative of some sort, involving a main character, but Stevens' concept for Illinoise revolved around the idea of personifying various places, moments, even feelings all related to the history of this Midwestern state.

Part of the album's notoriety is its careful planning. Many artists will spend months or years drawing the blueprint for their album, sometimes even locking themselves away from reality for writing and recording purposes. But Stevens took it a step further and spent nearly half a year researching everything he could find about the state. He essentially became an actor engaging in an intense character study of the notable and historic people, places, and events in Illinois so he could translate them to music. The resulting project was both a lyrical and sonic accomplishment and became the standout album in Stevens' discography that fans and critics still talk about nearly a decade later.

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