Discography of The Ramones: A Ranking
As I spend these summer days with my wife and new baby daughter, I listen to music. And an important thing for a new dad to do with his child is play his favorite music for them, in order to indoctrinate them at an early age and get them to like the same stuff that they like when they get older.
So I played Maggie every record in The Ramones’s discography. And as I did this, I realized that I have never searched my soul and given their discography a proper review and ranking. I will now do this. Thank you.
(Reminder: This is all just my opinion. Never take what I say as empirical fact.)
- Ramones
If I’m being real, their debut probably isn’t their very best record. It doesn’t pop out of the speakers like others, and its musical theme is a little one-note. But since I’m being an illogical fan, I’m ranking this number one. It has “Blitzkrieg Bop” on it, for god’s sakes. How could it not be number one? It’s also the first record of theirs that I fell in love with, and it’s the truest representation of what they wanted to be. I don’t need to say anything else about this, you just need to hear it if you haven’t.
2. Rocket to Russia
Where Ramones feels like the truest representation, Rocket to Russia is The Ramones at their absolute peak, firing on all cylinders. It thumps and bangs so hard. “Teenage Lobotomy,” “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker,” “We’re a Happy Family,” and so many others. And “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” is their first true ballad. Even that one is a corker. Man, what a record.
3. Leave Home
Coming right after the self-titled record, this one saw them improving upon their formula and really nailing the vocal hooks. Those “ooh-ooh”s on “I Love Her So” are beautiful. I put it just below Rocket to Russia because “What’s Your Game” is not very good. Sorry, that song.
4. Too Tough to Die
This is my one ranking decision that might confuse some rock journalists. They had just gotten their third drummer (Richie) and they were not on top of the world, but I think that slight lack of caring helped them to make a much more fun rock’n’roll record, rather than shooting for the moon with pop hits (as you’ll hear about later). My fondness for this could be chalked up to my buying it very early on in my life, on a church road trip that I did not want to go on. I was aware of this record’s perception even then, and buying this on that church trip felt like the ultimate outsider act. I dove into it and listened to it a million times. It has a bunch of lovely songs, and some appropriately dark ones too.
5. Road to Ruin
Most people would yell at me for not putting this at number four, as it’s common wisdom that the first four Ramones records are the very best. And though I really love it, and I absolutely adore the pop sensibilities that get introduced on this record (“Questioningly” is a particular out-of-left-field favorite), it just has a few songs that to this day blend together too much for me. I can barely think of how “Bad Brain” or “Go Mental” are different from each other, and that’s a bad sign.
6. Pleasant Dreams
Still in their phase of wanting a pop hit (which I swear I’ll tell you about in just a minute), this one suffers from some soft production that prevents any of it from hitting too hard. Songs like “Come On Now” and “She’s a Sensation” are pretty by-the-numbers Ramones fare. “It’s Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World)” is a top-ten worst Ramones song. But man, this one has “We Want the Airwaves” and “The KKK Took My Baby Away,” and a few others that really stick in my head.
7. End of the Century
Finally, I get to tell you about how the Ramones wanted a pop hit! They hired famed producer (and now convicted murderer) Phil Spector to produce this one, and he piled all his girl group Wall of Sound production bullshit all over it until it didn’t sound like The Ramones anymore, but they had spent too much time and money on it to make another record, so here we are. This goofiness did result in “Danny Says,” which is so goddamn lovely it doesn’t even matter that it barely sounds like them. It does matter a bit more with “Baby, I Love You,” a girl-group cover that should never have been recorded.
8. Subterranean Jungle
This one is baffling because it has such huge highlights (“Psycho Therapy,” “Outsider,” “Highest Trails Above”) and then a bunch of ehhhhh whatever. Not much of this is bad, but it just doesn’t do a whole lot for me. That cover of “Time Has Come Today” is such a stupid headache, I can’t stand it. But you know what I do love? I love “Time Bomb,” which is sung by Dee Dee and features this line: “I’m gonna brag about it — I flunked, I didn’t pass. I’m gonna brag about it, gonna kick somebody’s ass.”
9. Animal Boy
This is the beginning of the era of Ramones records where they haven’t bothered since to remaster them or include some cool B-sides. It’s also the beginning of the era when The Ramones were kind of barely trying to be a punk-metal band, so Joey sings in this weird belchy voice that makes my wife visibly cringe. “Something to Believe In” is great, “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” is unreasonably awesome, and I like “Somebody Put Something In My Drink,” but most of the rest are either pretty good or decent. Not good enough to be very high in this ranking, I’ll tell ya that for free!
10. Adios Amigos
Another weirdo opinion that will get me strange looks, I defend Adios Amigos more than I probably should. It was the last record they ever made, and though the common narrative will tell you that they were going through the motions at this point, I just don’t hear that at all. Sure, some of this is terrible. Dee Dee wasn’t in the band but he was writing some songs for them, and stuff like “Cretin Hop” and “Making Monsters For My Friends” are the kind of songs he wouldn’t bring to them if he had to own up and record them himself. But “Life’s a Gas” is one of my top-ten favorite Ramones songs, and I wish more people knew that one. They do a cover of Tom Waits’s “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” that makes you wonder if Waits wrote it specifically for them. And I just really love the vibrant, heavy production of this one. Give Adios Amigos a chance, dammit.
11. Halfway to Sanity
This is a very stupid record. It’s The Ramones at their most lunkheaded, and as you know by now, that’s saying something. It’s not so much punk as it is thumpy rock music. There’s also a godawful ballad (“Bye Bye Baby”) and a really godawful attempt at hardcore (“I’m Not Jesus”). I love “I Wanna Live” and “Garden of Serenity,” but other than those two, I can’t say I’m crazy about much else here.
12. Mondo Bizarro
Their second-to-last record. I feel bad ranking this one so low because it seems like they were really trying hard, but it just misses the mark. “Poison Heart” is gorgeous, and a couple others are fun rockers, but too much of this is just nondescript attempts at punk that all sound the same. I will admit that this is the Ramones record I’ve listened to least, so maybe in a few years I’ll warm up to it, apologize to it, give it a peck on the cheek, and rank it higher.
13. Brain Drain
It kills me to rank this as my least favorite Ramones record because it has “I Believe In Miracles” and “Pet Sematary,” and those songs are some of the best of their 80’s output. But there is an enormous dropoff after those two gems, and when it gets bad, it gets miserable. “All Screwed Up” is one of the lamest rock songs I’ve ever heard, and I don’t have much kinder words for “Come Back Baby” and “Don’t Bust My Chops.” Also, the secret ingredient that makes this my least favorite is how the DRUMS ARE SO FREAKING LOUD. They’re so high in the mix that they occasionally drown out guitar parts and lyrics. It’s astounding that they got all the way to the end of the production and no one had said, “Hey, do you think we should turn the drums down, like, a few notches and not make this super frustrating to listen to??”