First, despite me bringing up those titles, I hate comparing albums across generations. People love to debate who is the best basketball player of all time, or the best NFL team of all time…it’s an inherently flawed debate, because the factors that go into making an album, player, team great change with time, and the tools available to artist, player, team change as well.

But still, if you’re claiming Viva La Vida is the greatest rock album post-2000, or even of your time or in your library, that’d be one thing. But of ALL TIME????? I don’t think I could put it in the top 50 of all time…maybe not even in the top 100. Then again, my criteria for such a list might be different than yours. I take into account not just the album as a collection of songs, but its impact on the time period when it was released…and I think there’s a certain “test of time” factor that’d make it hard for Viva La Vida to make it into the upper echelon of my list. So in terms of cultural impact and test of time, Viva La Vida gets pretty low scores…for now.

If you don’t have some of those classic albums I mentioned, I’ll burn you copies of ‘em…cuz if you wanna be able to say Viva La Vida is the best album of all time, you’re gonna have to be pretty familiar with some of the ones that are generally considered among the best.

If you’re already really familiar with ‘em, and you still think Viva La Vida is the best of all time…I’m gonna give you hell.