AC/DC

100 Best Albums

Essential Albums

  • Back In Black
    Back In Black
    Back In Black

    100 Best Albums "Hells Bells" sets a mournful tone with its slow, ominous build, but once Johnson leans into the mic, the band is back in business. From there on out, it's a masterful metal adventure that features some of the heaviest and most fist-pumping music of their career, including "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution" and the tune that's probably inspired more late-night sing-alongs than any other, "You Shook Me All Night Long."

  • Highway to Hell
    Highway to Hell
    Highway to Hell

    Highway to Hell was the 1979 album that broke AC/DC in America, but its success was not without sacrifice. With the band’s US label, Atlantic, demanding the Antipodeans deliver a hit, they urged the quintet to work with a producer who knew what American radio wanted, rather than with their longstanding producers George Young and Harry Vanda. The pair had successfully stewarded AC/DC to this point in their career (and, as older brother to guitarists Angus and Malcom Young, George was quite literally family). After a brief dalliance with Eddie Kramer (Kiss, Led Zeppelin), the band teamed up with Robert John “Mutt” Lange, the South African producer who would go on to have multi-platinum hits with Def Leppard (Pyromania, Hysteria) and Shania Twain (The Woman In Me), and who had recently produced The Boomtown Rats’ UK Number One single, “Rat Trap”. On previous AC/DC recordings, capturing the live vibe of the band had been deemed more important than perfect performances. But Lange was a stickler for precision with an ear for melody and harmony, qualities that elevated the band’s sweat-drenched rock’n’roll into something grander—and nowhere more so than on the anthemic title track (inspired by AC/DC’s gruelling touring schedule). Groove is the key word in songs like “Girls Got Rhythm” and “Shot Down In Flames”, while “Beating Around the Bush” and “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)” are as adrenaline-charged as anything in the band’s catalogue, even with Lange’s more particular approach. While the LP’s title was cause for concern at Atlantic, who fretted it may impact the band’s success in America’s Bible Belt, it was the foreboding, bluesy closer “Night Prowler” that would years later garner the most controversy when it was linked with serial killer Richard Ramirez, said to be an AC/DC fan. Dubbed the Night Stalker by the media, he was arrested in 1985 and later sentenced to death for 13 murders. AC/DC strongly rejected the idea that the song had inspired such violence, with Malcolm Young professing that its lyrics—which included the lines “As you lie there naked/Like a body in a tomb/Suspended animation/As I slip into your room”—were about sneaking into girlfriend’s bedroom while her parents were asleep. Proof that Scott could never darken the mood for long, the six-minute epic ends with him uttering the catchphrase from Robin Williams’ late-’70s sitcom, Mork & Mindy: “Shazbot, nanu nanu”. In the language of Williams’ alien character it’s both a greeting and a farewell—an eerie note on which to sign off given that Scott would be dead within a year.

  • Let There Be Rock
    Let There Be Rock
    Let There Be Rock

    By the end of 1976, AC/DC were at something of a crossroads. Though they’d backed up their early success in Australia by making significant inroads into the UK and European markets, an American breakthrough remained elusive. The situation became more dire when the band’s US label, Atlantic, refused to release that year’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap album, contending they didn’t hear any hits. Such rejection was like waving a red rag at a bull holding an SG guitar, meaning that when AC/DC entered Albert Studios in Sydney in January 1977 to start work on Let There Be Rock, they did so with fire in their bellies and a point to prove. Largely recorded live in two weeks with the band’s longstanding producers George Young and Harry Vanda, the goal was to capture the raw, overdriven energy of the band in full swing, an antidote to the soft rock and disco that was sweeping American airwaves. They managed the feat masterfully, particularly on the ballistic title track; so explosive was its recording that Angus Young’s guitar amp reportedly started smoking as the song reached its furious climax. That number also features some of vocalist Bon Scott’s most inspired work, narrating the birth and rise of rock’n’roll with preacher-like intensity while mimicking the biblical story of Creation: “Let there be sound, and there was sound/Let there be light, and there was light”. Indeed, the Bible was a prime influence, the singer penning the lyrics with the aid of a copy he bought from a bookstore near the studio during the recording. Atlantic released the album internationally, but insisted the band replace the song “Crabsody in Blue”, which featured on the Australian and European versions, with “Problem Child” from Dirty Deeds. Featuring a clutch of songs that would become set list staples for decades and influence a generation of rockers to come—Guns N’Roses have regularly covered “Whole Lotta Rosie”, as the Foo Fighters have the title track—<I>Let There Be Rock is the album on which AC/DC resumed their march to world domination.

  • Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
    Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
    Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

    Funny to think that the nefarious title of AC/DC’s second internationally-released album comes from a 1960s children’s cartoon that guitarist Angus Young watched as a kid. The villain of Beany and Cecil</I> had a business card that read: “Dishonest John – Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”. The name does, however, perfectly suit the grimy, gritty sound of the record, typified by the title track’s snarling riff and pummelling rhythm, not to mention vocalist Bon Scott’s promises of violence on behalf of those requiring dirty deeds to be done (“Concrete shoes/Cyanide/TNT…Neckties/Contracts/High voltage…Do anything you want me to.”). Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap was recorded in staggered sessions at Sydney’s Albert Studios with trusted producers George Young and Harry Vanda during the band’s Lock Up Your Daughters Australian tour. As demonstrated by songs such as the furiously uptempo “Rocker”, it’s a rougher, rawer album than its predecessor, High Voltage</I>. The international version of that album is an amalgam of the band’s first two Australian releases, High Voltage and <I>TNT</I>—both name-checked in Scott’s “Dirty Deeds” lyrics. The singer is at his bawdy best on the rollicking “Big Balls” (“My balls are always bouncing to the left and to the right/It’s my belief that my big balls should be held every night”) and the lascivious closing track “Squealer”. He does, however, display a more forlorn side in the weary, bluesy “Ride On”, an ode to loneliness (“It’s another lonely evening/In another lonely town”). In a similar vein to “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’N’ Roll)”, the song “Ain’t No Fun (Waiting Round to Be a Millionaire)” is about the hard road to success, while Scott allegedly wrote “Problem Child” about Angus Young. Released in Europe and Australia in late 1976, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap was not initially issued by the band’s American label Atlantic, which reasoned it had no place in a world dominated by the FM radio success of artists such as Peter Frampton and Fleetwood Mac. Atlantic eventually relented in 1981, belatedly placing the album on American shelves following the multi-platinum success of 1980’s Back In Black</I>.

  • High Voltage
    High Voltage
    High Voltage

    If AC/DC’s debut album sounded like the work of a band that arrived fully formed, it may be because this version wasn’t technically a debut. Released internationally in 1976, it’s a cherry-picked amalgam of their first two Australia-only releases, High Voltage and TNT, which had hit local stores the year prior. “She’s Got Balls” and “Little Lover” (a song vocalist Bon Scott reportedly wrote for diminutive guitarist Angus Young) were the only two tracks that made the cut from the original High Voltage</I>; it was TNT where the band landed on the AC/DC sound. You know the one: Malcolm Young’s guitar acting as a chugging metronome to his younger brother Angus’ wild-eyed lead. This international version was released in anticipation of the band’s first visit to the UK, and in acknowledgment of the success they had enjoyed on home turf. It was produced by former Easybeats members George Young—Angus and Malcolm’s older brother—and Harry Vanda. The duo were instrumental in capturing the raw, sweaty intensity of AC/DC’s live show in the studio and refining their mastery of groove and razor sharp blues-influenced rock’n’roll (witness the growling “T.N.T.”). Scott is at his lascivious best in the raunchy boogie of “She’s Got Balls”, an ode to his former wife Irene that boasts the lyrics “She’s got balls, my lady/Likes to crawl, my lady/Hands and knees all around the floor”, while the bluesy “The Jack” is a cheeky extended metaphor for contracting STIs. “Rock ’N’ Roll Singer”, meanwhile, outlines the blueprint for Scott’s life: “I want to be a star/I can see my name in lights, and I can see the queue/I got the devil in my blood, tellin’ me what to do”. The aptly-titled “Live Wire” served as the band’s set opener for many years, while “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’N’ Roll)” not only evokes the bumpy road bands must travel to succeed, but manages the rare feat of incorporating bagpipes into a rock’n’roll song. Once High Voltage was unleashed on the world, AC/DC were well and truly on their way.

Artist Playlists

Singles & EPs

Live Albums

Compilations

More To Hear

More To See

About AC/DC

In a conversation with Apple Music in 2020, Angus Young, the guitarist and principal songwriter in AC/DC, mused on what he thought made the band tick. After all, by that point, they’d been around for more than 45 years, and had spent those years making more or less the same song. Where other 1970s hard rock bands digressed into concept albums and orchestral suites in tortured efforts to prove how smart they were, AC/DC treated their records the way a cobbler might treat a shoe, or a watchmaker a watch: as a humble craft to be refined through repetition, and always geared towards the utility of the final product. Young said that his older brother George, who had produced their first several albums, stressed the importance of making your point clear and never doing more than you need to. Anyone could be complex—just put more junk into the pot. “The real art,” Young said, “is making the complex simple.” Formed in Sydney, Australia, in 1973, the band presented a rebuttal to the bloat of art and progressive rock, but also restored the music to its roots in Little Richard, blues and a kind of pre-Beatles notion that that rock music was primarily meant to entertain. Albums such as 1979’s Highway to Hell and 1980’s Back in Black may have helped create heavy metal, but they also shared the minimalist attitude of punk: The songs were short, the chords simple, the spirit clear and uncompromising. They survived not only the death of their first real singer (Bon Scott) and, later, of Angus’ brother, co-founder and co-writer Malcolm, but the hearing damage of Scott’s replacement, Brian Johnson. “You can’t call an album Rock or Bust and then go bust,” Young joked about the band’s 2014 record. And so they remained: proud, primitive, electric.

FROM
Sydney, Australia
FORMED
November 1973
GENRE
Hard Rock

Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada