Even though this list tries to be definitive, there can’t truly be a “greatest singer-songwriter album.” The genre itself resists that kind of certainty. What matters in singer-songwriter music is not consensus, but connection: the feeling that a song was written to reach someone, even to reach you specifically. That’s the connection we wanted to capture with this list.

We approached that idea from multiple directions at once. We asked a group of artists and writers to each submit a small set of albums that influenced them and their songwriting. It wasn’t always about the “best” records, but the ones that stayed with them. The albums that changed their perspective, or simply refused to leave their lives once they arrived. You can see the lists and commentary of every artist here. 
It wasn't just artists though, we wanted to hear from you, the readers. We asked our readers for their top 3 singer-songwriter albums, as the people too are important in deciding this list. The genre has always been about the people, so there's no way to make this without them.

From those submissions, a larger picture slowly emerged. Some choices were expected, others deeply personal, and many existed in tension with one another. That tension is the point. A singer-songwriter list is never final; it’s a book written across decades, borders, and languages. This list is not an attempt to close that book, but to read it as clearly as possible.

What follows is a hundred albums that, together, show a shared language: the language of the singer-songwriter.