Apr. 13, 2026 The AllMusic 5-star rating is not easy to come by. This best-of-the-best ranking should be seen as being among the best of that genre. This is an album that is one of the top recordings within a genre or is an historically important work. It is an album that every listener interested in the genre and its history should hear. This rating is used very sparingly -- not every artist has a 5-star album. It's worth noting that sometimes a 5-star album may not be an artist's Album Pick (the flag indicating the best place to start with an artist, or the most representative of that artist's sound), but is more like an award for an album that serves as a landmark within a genre. From time to time, our editors go over the albums that may have come up in the estimation of the listener, and made a larger impact on the genre than was initially received upon its' debut, and then the albums are re-evaluated with a decent number getting bumped up to the coveted 5-star rating.…