Our Desert Island Albums

If you were a castaway on a desert island, there are a number of essentials you’d probably want to have: an axe, fishing rod, water filter, and probably a flint. These would keep you alive, but what music would you choose to lift your spirits and keep you sane? If you had to be stuck with just one album, what would it be? We asked some of our contributors for their pick and the responses are as varied as they are fun. Of course, there are a million great records we missed, so please feel free to share your own “desert island albums” in the comments. Enjoy!

John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (1965): It is no accident that the album that always has something new to offer is also about the love of God that sets a person free. I gave A Love Supreme a true hearing as I experienced the theology of the cross as more than an academic discipline. As I listened to Coltrane, I heard someone depicting the freedom and perfection of grace. For my money, the best part is the conclusion. Few do the telos of the gospel as well as Coltrane when he delivers that final resolution. – Ryan Cosgrove

Carole King’s Tapestry (1971) and Paul Simon’s Graceland (1986): King’s lyrics remind me that there is hardship in relationships (“So Far Away,” “It’s Too Late”) but also the unexpected gift of joy (“I Feel the Earth Move”). As far as Graceland goes, it took me years to realize that Paul Simon was not writing just about Elvis’ house, but of the grace of being alive and humanly flawed but loved. His marriage to Carrie Fisher had failed, and lyrics on songs such as “You Can Call Me Al” and “Homeless” bring out our longing for forgiveness. Alone on a desert island, these two albums would keep me company by reminding me of what it’s like to be human and in need. – Marilu Thomas

Rod Stewart’s Never a Dull Moment (1972): I could fudge and go with a triple album (George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass) or my favorite live album (The Band’s Rock of Ages), but I want to be respectful of the parameters. Pet Sounds has usually been my answer to this question, but I think I’d need something a bit less pristine to keep my heart engaged over the long haul. For that reason, and also because I once read that it’s Paul Westerberg’s desert island album, I’ll go with Never a Dull Moment. The material is perfectly varied and paced, the performances as natural as they come — with Rod’s voice at its absolute peak — but mainly it’s the sound that Rod and Ronnie (Wood) captured on this 1972 release that makes it such a keeper. There’s a warmth in these grooves that I’ve never heard elsewhere, and when I’m on my desert island, I think human warmth is what will keep me going. Never a Dull Moment positively twinkles. – David Zahl

Handel’s Messiah, conducted by Sir David Willcocks (1973): A desert island album pick demands I recognize three things: First, my moods will be variable and range widely (Elgar’s Enigma Variations will do nicely). Second, being stranded and alone means I’ll need to be reminded of my humanity (Springsteen’s Darkness at the Edge of Town). Finally, I will be bereft of a preacher and will need the music to take on this vocation (Bach’s cantata “Christ Lay in Death’s Strong Bands”). Only one album does all three: Handel’s Messiah. – Ken Sundet Jones

Richard & Linda Thompson’s I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (1974): Although The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and Joni Mitchell’s Blue are my favorite records, in the “desert island” scenario I have to go with I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. Linda Thompson is my favorite vocalist of all time, she conveys more in one note than most singers do in twenty (see: “Withered and Died”), and Richard Thompson, her husband at the time and my favorite guitarist of all-time other than Jerry Garcia (see the first fifty seconds of “The Calvary Cross” or the entirety of the live version added to later pressings), supplies her with beautiful melodies augmented by killer guitar, dulcimer, mandolin, piano, and harmonium parts while also being in fine voice himself. Though there is some (dark) humor in the songs, they are generally pretty downbeat or pining, which is likely how I’d feel if I were stuck on a desert island. It’s a perfect record and still underrated after fifty years despite near unanimous critical acclaim. It’s dark, deeply affecting, very honest, very British folk rock made by two of the most talented musicians around, and its honesty (and occasional bleak hyperbole, see “The End of the Rainbow”) about the human predicament when left to our own devices, balanced with the sonic beauty of the whole thing, would probably help me feel a little less alone on this hypothetical island just as it does in my actual day-to-day life. – Joey Goodall

Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Chronicle (1976): My friends know I’m a Bob Dylan nut. His vast catalog — and that of his many musical descendants: Springsteen, Paul Simon, Van Morrison, Bruce Cockburn, John Prine — is where I spend most of my listening hours. But I’m going with my gut here and picking an unrelated album I could listen to ad nauseam: CCR’s Chronicle. For me, it’s all about the CCR vibes. Sure, I love Fogerty’s simple gritty lyrics, gruff vocals, and those foot-tapping tunes, but it’s somehow just the whole package that speaks sustenance to my working-class soul. I can still remember the heat-drunk joy I felt listening to this album on repeat while sweating it out as a college student doing cleanup in the Louisiana sun after Hurricane Katrina. But wait! There is a Bob Dylan connection: turns out he helped convince a disillusioned Fogerty in 1987 to start singing all these great songs again after a fifteen-year hiatus. Bob had good reason! – Ben Self

Handel’s Messiah, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner (1976): Stranded on a desert island, this is the one album I would listen to over and over. Musically, it’s not necessarily my go-to choice, but the starkness of the melodies ringing out in rather desolate circumstances sounds defiantly hopeful. And to find that hope, I need to go straight to the source. The beauty of Handel’s Messiah is that it is witnessing with the prophet Isaiah, what was and what will be. And maybe I’ve already got my mind on Advent, but I feel like all I’m ever trying to do is find where Jesus is with me right here and now, deserted island or not. Not to mention, the idea of someone finding me already dead on the island, with Handel’s Messiah blissfully playing on, makes me smile. – Janell Downing

The Original Broadway Cast’s recording of Les Misérables (1987): There is no greater. Law, grace, gospel, grief, and some of the most powerful melodies to ever be put to music. (I’m partial to the original Broadway cast: there’s something to be said for the version you grow up on.) “To love another person is to see the face of God.” – Derrill Hagood McDavid

Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band’s Sing Lustily and With Good Courage (1990): My mind first went to obvious classics like The Beatles White Album and U2’s Achtung Baby, but I know I could stand to have this Maddy Prior album on a desert island because I’ve already listened to it so many times I am certain I will never grow tired of it. And this from someone who never, ever listens to “Christian music” voluntarily (other than Bach and a few concessions at Christmas). There is simply something transporting and transfixing about these hymn renditions, from the instruments to the style to Maddy’s own distinctive voice. – Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

TLC’s CrazySexyCool (1994): This no-skips masterpiece has the sexiest song ever written: “Red Light Special,” which made my mother decide I probably should go on birth control in eighth grade. Related, the unexpected back-to-school special themed “Waterfalls” still slaps. Which incidentally, when I am an old woman, heading towards the light, God willing I will be reciting the Lord’s Prayer and “Clear blue and unconditional skies have dried the tears from my eyes. No more lonely cries.” – Sarah Condon

Cake’s Fashion Nugget (1996): I’m not sure why I always go back to this album (and their catalog), but it must be due to the high school years in which I first heard it. Somehow it has retained nostalgia while still feeling fresh. Underneath the amazing mix of bass, drums, horns, and miscellany, there’s his moderately deadpan voice. They were always accused of being cynical, but when you listen closely, they obviously care a lot. A stretch to say this was my first glimpse of being taught “to care, and not to care”? – Ryan Alvey

Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind (1997): If it’s permissible to lop an entire track off one’s favorite record, then begone ye mawkish cliché of a love song “Make You Feel My Love.” Now drop the needle and here we go — “lovesick,” walking “down that dirt road until someone lets (us) ride,” then waiting on that train platform where “hearts” are “beatin’ like pendulums swinging on chains,” then “twenty miles out of town and cold irons bound,” but “trying to get to heaven” because in this life “it’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there”; winding up finally in the “highlands, simple and fair,” for what sound like end-of-life ruminations, by turns comical and bittersweet, from a singer only in his mid-fifties, lol. Sprinkled with choice quotes from the Great Americana Songbook, drenched in gorgeous murk by producer Daniel Lanois. – Ken Wilson

Mineral’s The Power of Failing (1997): This debut album from short-lived Texas emo outfit Mineral is one of those rare works that transcends its own genre. Sure, the requisite musical dramatics (lots of soaring guitar riffs and tempo changes) are present, as well as the constant emotional intensity that gives the genre its name. But somehow Failing is suffused throughout with real humility (instead of the self-loathing typical of emo) and a kind of joyful penitence. “And everything is grace,” says the album’s final track, “Parking Lot,” and by that point it’s easy to believe that. – David Clay

Lyle Lovett’s Live in Texas (1999): I’ve been lucky enough to twice see Lovett and his Large Band live. Lovett is an inimitable storyteller and this album has some of his best songs. My husband and I danced to “Nobody Knows Me” at our wedding and “Church” never hesitates to make me laugh out loud. – Jane Grizzle

U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004): I know, the right answer for best U2 album is Joshua Tree, or the critic’s choice Achtung Baby. But How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb was my coming-of-age U2 album, the songs my best friend and I jammed to as novice guitar players in high school. It’s as religious an album as the band has produced, despite its forever association with Apple’s first iPod commercials. As the black silhouetted dancers shimmied on neon backgrounds, Bono crooned to the masses that “your love is teaching me how to kneel!” Let the hearer understand. Other tracks of deep significance: “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own” is ostensibly Bono pleading with his stubborn father to accept help in his old age, but works just as well as a hymn from heaven to his wayward people. “City of Blinding Lights” was incredible to experience up close during the band’s massive 360 tour, which I saw in Pittsburgh in 2011. It’s the music that has my ear these days, especially since the album celebrates its twentieth anniversary next week (!), and one that’ll certainly offer hope, memory, and companionship on the long doldrum desert island days until my rescue. (Specifically, I want the version of the album that contains the grace saturated track of unconditional love titled “Mercy,” which was cut from the final release, but accidentally included in some early promo releases). – Bryan Jarrell

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, conducted by Paavo Jarvi (2006): No single performance of Beethoven’s ground-breaking symphony can be considered definitive, though this one comes close. This stirring rendition is founded upon three simple historical hypotheses: 1) Beethoven’s metronome wasn’t broken, 2) orchestras in the nineteenth century were smaller, and 3) the horns then sounded fuzzier. The end result is a speedy and thrilling symphony that probably sounded closer to Beethoven’s intention. (Compare, for example, Leornard Bernstein’s plodding and brooding delivery of the same material). The genius and emotional range of the four movements is breathtaking. I’ve listened to this hundreds of times and with every listen I hear (and feel) something new. – Todd Brewer

The Avett Brothers’ Emotionalism (2007): They might be my favorite band. I mean, my wife and I’s first dance was to one of their songs, though from a different album. Emotionalism is just the best kind of roller coaster tackling subjects you didn’t know needed to be plumbed through a guitar, banjo, and bass. One about how we can’t be the one to lift shame from our shoulders, we have to have someone else do that. One about how the furnace of love is fired in the mistakes we make. I mean, the album itself starts with one whose chorus is about the mystery of what lies beyond the veil. What else do you need on a desert island? You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll dance, and you’ll ponder. Oh and don’t miss the pure horizontal embodiment of grace in “The Ballad of Love and Hate.” – Will Ryan

Joseph Jean-Baptiste Arban’s Twelve Celebrated Fantaisies and Airs Varies, performed by Charles Gates (cornet) and Stacey Rogers (piano) (2008): From childhood until the year my dad died, the daily sounds of his cornet warm-ups and practice of these tricky Arban tunes — captured on this 2008 recording — permeated the rooms I lived in and inevitably stuck themselves in my mind. Hearing them reminds me of my dad, how he spoke to me and about me as if I were a better person than I could imagine. I still dig up his emails and find the mundane and trivial interwoven with his compassion. – Sarah Gates

High Street Hymns’ Hearts and Voices (2011): A bit “direct,” but on a deserted island I’d first take Christian music — I’d need it! — probably Hearts and Voices, if I could only pick one. Classic, gospel-saturated hymns in more contemporary arrangements. – Will McDavid

Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories (2013): This would easily be my desert island album of choice, not simply for its endless playability and catchy melodies, but for also its relentless investigation into the question of consciousness, identity, and the highs and lows of human existence. If I’m going to be stuck on an island alone for the foreseeable future slowly losing my mind, I need something as ecstatic as it is poignant and existential: it’s an album for all emotions! – Jeb Ralston

J. Cole’s 2014 Forest Hills Drive (2014): This work is a modern-day hip-hop Ecclesiastes where Cole tells a tale spanning from his birth to his adolescence and all the way through his rise to fame, fortune, and Billboard charts. Not only does he impress with his rhyme schemes and choice vocabulary, but he also accurately reveals the heart’s longing and the inability of accolades to fulfill it. A truth always easier to digest when it comes packaged with a head bob. – Blake Nail

The Tallest Man on Earth’s Dark Bird Is Home (2015): I first heard Kristian Matsson’s wailing, raw voice on my family’s shared Windows Media Player in 2010 and thought, “Well that sounds a bit quirky!” In the years since, Matsson’s quirky, endearing vocals, old-time-style banjo playing, and compelling lyrics have made me one of his biggest fans. Dark Bird Is Home was released in the wake of Matsson’s divorce and explores his nostalgia-filled journey of grief and growth. The record is the epitome of bittersweet, featuring the most perfectly devastating use of the f-word in a song I’ve ever heard. The album closes with Matsson singing (nearing a whisper), “I thought that this would last for a million years / But now I need to go / Oh, f**k,” followed by a sweeping crescendo of beautiful instrumentals that I think sound incredibly hopeful. The album gives me goosebumps every time. – Grace Leuenberger

The Oh Hellos’ Dear Wormwood (2015): If I were stuck on a deserted island, I would want an album that both resonated with my suffering AND filled me with hope of victory. Dear Wormwood fulfills both of those needs. The musical dynamics go from soft and amazingly beautiful guitar finger-picking (so soft that you can even hear fingers slide across strings from one chord to the next) to all of the instruments playing loudly and full voices singing “Ohs” that soar above it all; these dynamics reflect the ups and downs of our lives. “Dear Wormwood” is how each letter starts in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, and just like those letters, these songs are mostly addressed to the devil and calling him out for who he is, but they are also declaring the victory of a “Soldier, Poet, King” and who we are in light of that. On that desert island I would love to be reminded to “Look to the sky, where the sign will be shown. Heaven and earth and the King on his throne.” – Juliette Alvey

Portishead’s Roseland NYC Live: 25th Anniversary (2024): Beth Gibbons, Portishead’s vocalist, is standing in the middle of Manhattan’s Roseland Ballroom, eyes closed, hands simultaneously grasping the microphone and a cigarette. Her voice is alternately whispering, pleading, quavering, sometimes shouting — delivering a word. I have never seen an audience so enraptured and awed by a performance, sitting in stunned silence while surrounding the band and orchestra on that famous wooden floor. Seemed like a holy moment, like church; I have always wished I was there that July evening in 1997. – Josh Retterer 

Runners-Up (Two Albums Were Possible)

The Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore East (1971): The Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore East has been a personal fave since I can remember first listening to music. The songs — a mixture of originals and covers — cut to the heart of human experience, from yearning for love (“Statesboro Blues”, “You Don’t Love Me”) to guilt (“Done Somebody Wrong”, “One Way Out”) and melancholic longing for God’s mercy (“Stormy Monday”). The band’s heavy use of blues influences gives the music an uncanny ability to cut to the heart and lift faith like a shipwreck from the depths of human need. – Will McDavid

Diana Ross’s Diana (1980): Fun is all Diana Ross wanted for this album. And fun it is. In this album, Ross gets the Niles Rodgers treatment. It’s a blast. There’s not a wrong note on the entire album. This album contains some of Ross’ biggest hits. But do yourself a favor and treat yourself to the rest of the goodies Ross and Rodgers have packed into the album. Diana is a party record you can return to over and over again, no matter how long your desert island stay lasts. – Ryan Cosgrove

Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager (2010): After the hit success of Cudi’s debut album, Man on the Moon: The End of Day, we realize that such trailblazing emotional honesty in hip-hop doesn’t heal the wounds which were so uniquely and sonically described. Cudi descends into depression, drug abuse, and loneliness, and, at the time, I’d never heard such things displayed so openly. They were a comfort to me in lonely adolescent years. A true testament to success’ lack of medicinal value, leaving the soul wanting. – Blake Nail

The Oh Hellos’ Through the Deep, Dark Valley (2012): Now let me see, which of these songs have I NOT used in a sermon? Ha! Seriously, The Oh Hellos are incredibly led by the Spirit. Listening to them makes my heart feel like it will burst. The promises of Christ feel evergreen. There’s a deeper magic that seems to re-enchant our world! Am I claiming too much? Whenever I need to get out of my own head and worldly concerns I run Through the Deep, Dark Valley. – Ryan Alvey

Twenty One Pilots’ Vessel (2013): It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with Twenty One Pilots (see my article a few months ago and one from way back in 2019), so it’s no surprise that I would choose one of their albums to have with me on a desert island. The difficult question was, which album?! Vessel is one of their earlier albums, and although I love all of their later ones, this one has a special raw and honest quality about it. Somehow I think songs like “Car Radio,” “Fake You Out,” and “Trees,” which all talk about silence and giving space for our own thoughts and maybe even space to hear the one “surrounding all [our] surroundings” would be fitting for a desert island. – Juliette Alvey

Jon Bellion’s The Human Condition (2016): Bellion is a brilliant artist, and I think this album is his masterpiece. Weaving elements of pop, hip-hop, R&B, and gospel, the tracks are almost symphonic in quality, and they introduced me to a sound like nothing I’d heard before. Plus, his raps are really fun to memorize! Bellion does not hold back from confessing his shortcomings and sins, as well as the impossible challenge to change oneself. – Grace Leuenberger

Jeanette Köhn, the Knabenchor Hannover, the Capella de la Torre, and Nils Landgren’s New Eyes on Martin Luther (2017): This concert in the big 500th anniversary of the Reformation year is the most amazing combination of traditional Lutheran choir music with… jazz. The one bridges seamlessly into the other, and I still can’t quite believe they pulled it off. It is surprising, delightful, and reverent in its innovativeness. – Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Bruce Springsteen’s Best of Bruce Springsteen (Expanded Edition) (2024): I’ve enjoyed different versions of Bruce over the years — Bruce my imaginary lover, Bruce my compatriot, and Bruce my friendly older brother/uncle/dad (don’t think about it too hard). He conveys sentiments of longing and pain that span human experience (like in “Streets of Philadelphia”) and sentiments of devotion and love that I deeply want to hear. In “Tougher Than the Rest,” he sings: “So somebody ran out / Left somebody’s heart in a mess / Well, if you’re looking for love / Honey, I’m tougher than the rest.” It reminds me of lines from one of those emails my dad sent (that I now have tattooed on my forearm): “Everything will be OK. And you and me — always good.” It’s a robust, pure love, clearly conveying that we are all worth never being left behind, pointing to the greatest love from the one who has never left. – Sarah Gates