The top 10: 10 Joni Mitchell BLUE 9 Nirvana NEVERMIND 8 Chuck Berry THE GREAT 28 7 Blondie PARALLEL LINES 6 Ramones RAMONES 5 Guns N' Roses APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION 4 Stevie Wonder INNERVISIONS 3 Bob Dylan HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED 2 Beastie Boys LICENSED TO ILL 1 Madonna THE IMMACULATE COLLECTION I haven't seen the issue yet, but here are some other highlights: 13- Michael Jackson, Off the Wall (no Thriller!) 18- Prince, Purple Rain 70- Prince, Sign O' The Times The #1 Write-Up... Madonna The Immaculate Collection Sire, 1990 From Bat City, Michigan (it also has the tracklisting, the album cover and a pic of M with the "healthy" shirt from circa 1985) Is there anything better? Is there anything more American? Yes, she's a colossal star, one who has been both mall icon and cultural radical for almost two decades. But the real reason Madonna's Immaculate Collection- a flawless hits package spanning the first 10 years of her career- tops this list is that it's everything a great album ought to be: whip-smart, megasexy, covertly dangerous heart-stopping, ass-shakingly, world-shapingly fun. Why The Immaculate Collection? It's the pleasure, stupid. Just as Bob Dylan insurgent braininess embodied the boundary-stretching '60s, Madonna epitomized the '80s, from the coy consumerism of "Material Girl" to the stylish hedonism of "Vogue." She was a change-agent of Hollywood proportions, embodying womanhood's power while simultaneously upending musty notions of femininity. But she never lost her knack for the flirty and frivolous, either, and Immaculate gets at the heart of American desire as brazenly as any twentieth-century book or film. And since it is above all expertly built, wonderfully sung music, the songcraft lets listeners ignore all of the above and just *dance*. Whether she's extolling escapism ("Holiday"), wrestling with heartbreak ("Live to Tell"), personalizing big issues ("Papa Don't Preach" or just breathing heavily ("Justify My Love"), each listen shows that Madonna's unerring musical instincts- let's go ahead and call it genius- were as formidable as her more famous ambition. Even its creator still plays it. "Quite recently, as a matter of fact," Madonna tells Blender. The collection deftly traces her path from disco queen to pop singer to cultural lightning rod (the video for "Justify My Love," rejected by MTV, landed her in the hot seat on ABC's Nightline), But there's no whiff of the time capsule here, no sense of neatly summing up a moment. "I never thought of the album as the end of anything," she says. Indeed, her career has lost little momentum in the 12 years since. Commercially and creatively, Madonna is still taking the competition to school. As a fellow blond pop star, No Doubt's Gwen Stefani puts it: "She's been able to keep everyone's attention, to mature and grow older in front of the world. It's not an easy thing to do. And she just keeps on being good." No wonder Madonna laughs upon being told that The Immaculate Collection has been named Blender's number 1. "What about Greatest Hits Volume 2?" she teases. "Get in the twenty-first century!"- John Aizlewood -- ※ Origin: 交大機械工廠 ◆ From: 61-220-188-189.HINET-IP.hinet.net