When I say that this assignment fell into my lap, I mean it literally. I’ve been piling the more than 100 books in Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series on top of my desk for the past few months while attempting to read the entire collection sequentially. At some point, the tower of criticism grew too architecturally unsound, and with a slow-motion lurch, more than half of the thin volumes fell on top of me, bouncing off my laptop, cascading onto the floor, spooking the dog, and making an even bigger mess of my already messy office. I carefully re-shelved the books in numerical order and got back to reading.

When the series started assigning one album to one author back in 2003—right around the time the album was rumored to be cooling on a slab in the pop culture morgue, ready to be opened up and autopsied—there was no template for this kind of publication, no prescribed notions to fill. The books could take the shape of an essay, or a work of fiction, or even some odd hybrid of both. But whatever the format, these paperbacks are aggressively accessible: short, pocketsize, easily consumed during a few commutes. Perhaps more crucially, potentially anyone can write a 33 1/3 book: critics, academics, journalists, musicians, poets, assorted armchair commentators.

After that precipitous collapse, while still making my way through the books in order, I noticed the authors grew younger and younger, while their theses became more offbeat and their choices in albums less canonical and more eccentric. Instead of more Beatles and Stones, we get Kanye West, J Dilla, and Ween. The range of the series, especially in its second 50 titles, is not just broader, but bolder, as the writers challenge the accepted Boomer notion of a “rock classic.” There’s something incredibly subversive and compelling about the notion of elevating They Might Be Giants and Dinosaur Jr to the same level as Pink Floyd and the Band. A new title on Koji Kondo’s music for Super Mario Bros. not only expands how we define the concept of an album but reconsiders the very notion of what constitutes pop music itself.

The 33 1/3 series has revealed a way that we can save the album: by dislocating it from history and letting a new generation develop their own canon. Recently announced titles suggest this trend will continue, but while we wait for new editions on Beat Happening, the Raincoats, and the Geto Boys, here are the 33 best 33 1/3 titles in alphabetical order by artist.