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Last Active 04-09-22 8:13 pm
Joined 10-08-11

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 Lists
03.14.22 Every Alice Cooper Album from Worst to ♦12.06.18 Rankin' 2018 Before It's Over
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05.24.17 Why doesn't Sputnik show TMBG more love03.24.14 Cd's I Picked Up In Boston
02.25.14 Proggy Progbourne06.14.13 2013 Best To Worst So Far
04.20.13 System Of A Down Ranked04.20.13 Ozzy Sabbath Albums Ranked
03.19.13 If You Don't Know These, You're Missing

Every Alice Cooper Album from Worst to Best

There are 28 albums under the Alice Cooper name and by god you do NOT need to listen to all of them. I did that for you because I was really dang bored and wanted a large discog to dive into.
28Alice Cooper
Dragontown

Not the worst album sonically, but it was definitely the one I personally hated the most. On top of being a worse rehash of his previous industrial outing, Brutal Planet, the second half is riddled with muddied, contradictory metaphors and irritating Christian fear-mongering that made this album unlistenable after a while. So glad Cooper dropped his preaching after this album. Don't sleep on that opening track, tho. It's pretty great.

Best Track: Triggerman
27Alice Cooper
Detroit Stories

A bored malaise that felt like one of the most "nothing" releases I've heard in a long time. When the best songs on the album are covers solely based on the fact they're good songs from the start, that's pretty concerning. I Hate You is absolutely a contender for Alice Cooper's worst song, and I left this album feeling way too empty.

Best Track: Our Love Will Change the World
26Alice Cooper
Zipper Catches Skin

If this were going strictly by how bad the album sounds, this one's would be #28, but I can't hate on it too much because its such an entertaining trainwreck of an album. This was around the height of Alice Cooper's 80's substance abuse issues and it shows in his vocal perforances. When he's not doing some bizarre accent or baffling character voice, he sounds like he just rolled out of bed and was recording his vocals from the floor. Good on him for staying clean for the past few decades. I'd hate to see how things would have progressed otherwise.

Best Track: I Am the Future
25Alice Cooper
Pretties For You

The definition of a "completionists only" debut. An interesting prototype for what the Alice Cooper band would be in just two years' time, but cheap production, sloppy composition, and a lack of identity make this psychedelic relic an oddity and nothing more

Best Track: Swing Low, Sweet Cheerio
24Alice Cooper
Easy Action

A slight improvement over Pretties For You, Easy Action shows the next step in the band's metamorphosis, especially with more instances of Alice Cooper's trademark snarl. Sadly, this is merely the cocoon and the band hasn't quite reached their stride yet. Alice's aforementioned snarl is super rough, often sounding worse here than it would sound 40+ years later. Another oddity.

Best Track: Refrigerator Heaven
23Alice Cooper
Constrictor

Freshly sober, Alice gives the 80's another go after his new-wave "black out" period didn't work out. What we get is his first step into the wacky world of glam metal, and sadly winds up stumbling out the gates in the process. This may be the first Alice Cooper album I'd call boring. Bland melodies and flat production make this nothing to write home about, save for the synth-pop inspired Friday the 13th soundtrack single that closes the album.

Best Track: He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)
22Alice Cooper
Paranormal

I liked this album at first, but then my Spotify shuffle simply IMPLORED I listen to at least one track from this record every single time I'd get in my car. Maybe that soured me on this album, but relistens weren't terribly kind to this one. It features some pretty decent lyrics mixed in with the bog-standard boomer rock, but a very average album overall.

Best Track: Paranormal
21Alice Cooper
Dirty Diamonds

Dirty Diamonds doesn't invite much discussion. I think this was trying to be a return to form after two albums of industrial metal and one of a more modern hard rock sound, but it feels like a forgettable 1975 release. Its lows aren't as low as some of his other works, but its not an album worth seeking out.

Best Track: Perfect
20Alice Cooper
Lace and Whiskey

A hot start doesn't save this film-noir concept from losing steam quickly and never quite regaining it. Alice Cooper's 70's work is extremely noteworthy on the whole, but Lace and Whiskey is one of the few instances that decade where Alice swung and missed.

Best Track: Lace and Whiskey
19Alice Cooper
Flush The Fashion

The first Cooper album of the 80's starts the decade off on a bizarre note. Like a significantly more coherent and interesting version of Zipper Catches Skin, the experimentation on display here is certainly commendable. Results may vary on this one, but I think its worth a look if you're really curious.

Best Track: Talk Talk
18Alice Cooper
Trash

The album that spawned the 1989 smash hit Poison, Alice goes all-in on hair metal right at the tail end of its popularity. The things that make Alice Cooper Alice Cooper are certainly here, but the instrumentals aren't anything you can't find elsewhere in the upper echelon of the genre. Entertaining if you have a stomach for 80's cock rock schlock, but can be tough to get through sometimes.

Best Track: Bed of Nails
17Alice Cooper
Along Came a Spider

There's some serious bangers on this one. Vengeance is Mine is one of the best Alice Cooper songs since the turn of the century and its always good to see Slash doing Slash stuff. Beyond that, much like Dirty Diamonds that preceded it, it doesn't invite a lot of discussion. Regardless, a marked improvement over that release.

Best Track: Vengeance is Mine
16Alice Cooper
DaDa

God the early 80's were a weird time for Aliec Cooper. Another new-waveish glam rock release with lots of experimentation Alice had never done before or since that make it an entertaining listen for the curious fan. Some may get more out of this record than me, but you'd be hard pressed to call it one of his best.

Best Track: Scarlet and Sheba
15Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper Goes to Hell

(For the record, every album from this point on are more-or-less recommended listening)

Yes, Go To Hell is an all-time classic song with fun guitar work and ridiculous lyrics, but it was also when the cracks started to show in Alice Cooper ridin' solo. A lot of the haunting, complex lyricism that remained from the band days was leaving quickly and the writing here shows Alice Cooper's greater interest in being a cartoon character without a ton to say. That disappointment aside, this is some fun 70's rock with some undeniable earworms riddled throughout.

Best Track: Go To Hell
14Alice Cooper
The Eyes Of Alice Cooper

The only album of Alice Cooper's main discography that isn't on streaming services for some reason, and it will be sorely missed in my rotation. This album had a slow start, but basically the entire latter half of The Eyes of Alice Cooper is shockingly solid. A good mix of modern and classic hard rock make this one of the most genuinely fun Alice Cooper records he'd released in years up to that point.

Best Track: This House is Haunted
13Alice Cooper
Special Forces

Alice Cooper's best "black out" album, this is the one where the odd risks Alice took mostly paid off. Albums like this make me wish Alice Cooper would revisit making more electronic-focussed music when he's in a better place than he was when these records came out. This, and a few select later tracks in his career, make me fantasize about what could have been.

Best Track: Who Do You Think We Are
12Alice Cooper
From the Inside

A fascinating concept of each song being about real people Alice met in rehab bolsters a solid album of catchy, keyboard-heavy 70's rock. The music is good, but I really do get lost in the concept. Maybe it's just me, but I tend to attempt visualizing the characters these songs are about and it adds to this album's mystique.

Best Track: Nurse Rozetta
11Alice Cooper
Muscle of Love

Under most circumstances, this would be a pretty exceptional piece of 70's rock goodness, but numerous aspects deeply hurt this release. To start, it was the first dip in quality Alice Cooper experienced after a streak of four bonafide classic albums. Secondly, and most tragic of all, this is a limp and disappointing swan song for the life of Alice Cooper: The Band. While this album is definitely good and worth a spin, it lacks what defines Alice Cooper, and the band deserved a better goodbye than this.

Best Track: Woman Machine
10Alice Cooper
Raise Your Fist and Yell

After the snoozefest that was Constrictor, Raise Your Fist and Yell takes every aspect of that album and improves it to make an extraordinarily fun piece of Twisted Sisterly cartoon heavy metal. It starts out a little repetitive with four straight songs of teenage rebellion sung by a man approaching his 40's, but it ends with Alice returning to his slasher villain persona for some dark and spooky songs of bloodthirsty cheese, culminating in a final track which could take home the trophy for most tragically underrated Alice Cooper song.

Best Track: Roses On White Lace
9Alice Cooper
Hey Stoopid

Released in the dying days of hair metal, Hey Stoopid is significantly better than it had any right to be. Crispy clean production, magnificent guitar work, and a litany of stupidly catchy melodies, this is what Alice Cooper's previous three glam metal records dream they could be. As a couple of semi-related early 90's goofs would say, they are truly "not worthy" in comparison.

Best Track: Snakebite
8Alice Cooper
Brutal Planet

Dragontown's daddy, Brutal Planet was Alice Cooper's first swing into the world of dark, sludgy industrial metal. It works better than you'd expect. The heaviest music Alice Cooper has ever made with some biting lyrics about societal and global issues that only occasionally feels preachy and embarassing. This record's fatal flaw is its repetitiveness that admittedly fatigued me by the end, but don't let that deter you. It's an interesting as hell release.

Best Track: Brutal Planet
7Alice Cooper
Welcome 2 My Nightmare

This album is not perfect. In fact, it's very flawed. It's too self-referential, the auto-tune in the opening track sounds terrible, and Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever is an absolute stinker. That said, this album is a varied, intriguing blast. Some of the best lyrics of Alice's solo career can be found in select tracks on this record, but it still has fun with itself intermittenly. It constantly throws new tricks at you and never gets boring in its nearly hour-long runtime. Also, sidenote, Kesha sweetie, please follow Miley Cyrus's lead and make a rock album. Your voice fits this music far too well and it'd be a shame if we don't get more.

Best Track: I Gotta Get Outta Here
6Alice Cooper
The Last Temptation

We're approaching masterpiece territory now. Ditching the hair metal sound, Alice makes his first conept album since Dada, as his Steven character returns for another haunting tale of torment and temptation. A return to form of 70's Alice with plenty of 90's modernizations, The Last Temptation is the best album he'd made in 20 years up to that point, and the last time Alice decided to stretch his artist muscles and make something relatively thought-provoking from start to finish. Most impressively of all, Alice managed to implement his freshly born-again beliefs into this album in a way that not only did not interfere with the lyrical quality, but actually managed to enhance the album's story. Whaddaya know?

Best Track: Bad Place Alone
5Alice Cooper
School's Out

Here it is. THE Alice Cooper song. The title track is a generation-defying piece of rock and roll with a message that everyone but the most curmudgeonly of pencil pushes can get behind. It is Alice Cooper's defining moment, and its on an album that more than holds its weight against the juggernaut that is School's Out the song. A collection of smooth and groovy hard rock that's perfect for snapping fingers with the boys as you slowly approach some punk in an alley waiting to get their teeth knocked out. A classic in every sense.

Best Track: School's Out
4Alice Cooper
Billion Dollar Babies

Alice Cooper was a boundary pusher in the 70's, but I think this was the biggest example of it. This group's ability to put forth such unnerving and uncomfortable material and make it into a digestible yet unique glam rock experience. Every song on Billion Dollar Babies is great for completely different reasons than the song that preceeds it or the song that follows it, and Alice himself goes all out and provides some of the most engrossing and captivating vocal performances of his life.

Best Track: Generation Landslide
3Alice Cooper
Welcome To My Nightmare

A solo debut of stunning quality that Alice Cooper would never quite reach again, Welcome To My Nightmare is an imaginitive rock opera full of torment and triumph. Horror and confidence. Shock and fun. It is the definition of Alice Cooper at his absolute best. An album of catchy tunes, hard rock, and haunting piano that no other human being on this planet could have made but one Alice Cooper.

Best Song: The Black Widow
2Alice Cooper
Killer

Honestly, ask me tomorrow and the #1 and #2 slots on this list could have absolutely swapped. It's one of those situations, but today, Killer is the runner up. Hitting you hard and fast with one of my favorite opening tracks ever in Under My Wheels, this chunky, guitar driven hard rock classic has some of the best and punchiest production you'll find in an early 70's rock record. Killer manages to fit so much in such a short runtime with not a wasted second in this thrilling, sub 40 minute masterpiece.

Best Track: Halo of Flies
1Alice Cooper
Love It To Death

I consider Alice Cooper to be one of the most underappreciated acts in rock history. When the best albums of the 70's are discussed, I do not see Love It To Death brought up nearly often enough. I'm not saying it should top those lists necessarily, but it absolutely deserves to be in the conversation. Some of the songs on Love It To Death will never be touched again, with some of the most thought-provoking and captivating writing of any of these men's careers. Compositions range from dead simple to deeply complex with equal effectiveness, and show a gargantuan glow-up from the sloppy Easy Action. Alice Cooper has arrived, and that name will be attached to a lot of music for the next 50 years. Good or bad, it will all certainly be distinct, made by a one-of-a-kind act that the world would be worse off without.

Best Track: Black Juju
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