Buddy HollyBest Buddy Holly Albums Ranked

Memorial Collection

rollingstone

10

“Commemorating the 50th anniversary of 22-year-old Buddy Holly’s death in a plane crash, this 60-track anthology offers monster hits and raw early versions from rock’s hiccup-voiced auteur. Holly’s "That’ll Be the Day" offers DIY Elvis swagger, and his soothing single "Words of Love" features not only one of rock’s earliest overdubbed harmony vocals but also […]”

For the First Time Anywhere

rollingstone

8.0

“Last September, while rummaging in the mustier reaches of the MCA tape archives in Los Angeles, Steve Hoffman, head of the company’s catalog-research-and-development department, came across a long-forgotten box marked "Do Not Use." Inside were some ancient tapes and another label: HOLLY. Rockets went off in Hoffman’s head. He realized immediately that these were the […]”

Memorial Collection

pitchfork

7.7

“There's no question Buddy Holly deserves the big reissue treatment. For less than two years during the late 1950s, he helped revolutionize rock'n'roll with his hiccupping vocal style, inventive arrangements, tenderly exuberant songwriting, and gut-wringing guitar-slinging. He has been exalted in the dead-rock-star pantheon and overly romanticized in the process, but his music still encourages star”

Buddy Holly

rollingstone

7.0

“When Buddy Holly died in February 1959 – in the plane crash that also claimed Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper – he was just 22 and had only been a star since the fall of ’57, when his first single with the Crickets, "That’ll Be the Day," went to Number One. But in that […]”