The 20 best guitar albums of the decade

(Image credit: Francesco Prandoni/Getty Images)

What makes a great guitar album isn’t a whole lot different to what makes a great album. If there’s electric guitar on the tape, and the songs are great, then it’s a great guitar album, right?

Well, sure, but when we are talking guitar albums we are being that little bit more exacting; we are looking for the albums with guitars front and center, whose existence revolves around the instrument, around what it’s doing, and where the player is taking the guitar in terms of tone, technique and composition.

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Jonathan Horsley

Jonathan Horsley has been writing about guitars since 2005, playing them since 1990, and regularly contributes to publications including Guitar World, MusicRadar and Total Guitar. He uses Jazz III nylon picks, 10s during the week, 9s at the weekend, and shamefully still struggles with rhythm figure one of Van Halen’s Panama.