The 25 best glam rock albums, according to Radio X magazine

Glam-rock takes center stage in the new ranking from Radio X magazine, which has selected its 25 favorite albums from the era of “lipstick rock'n'roll,” according to John Lennon's famous definition.
At the dawn of the 1970s, in England, rock becomes a masquerade ball. Under gaudy neon lights, young "dudes" run riot: neo-freaks who turn their hippie cousins' eco-pacifist gatherings into an unrestrained festival of kitsch. They've lost the innocence and idealism of their naive older siblings, the psychedelic "flower children" hippies. These are vain, wicked kids, all "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll," and all they want is to have fun, under the banner of disengagement and carefree abandon. They find the fulfillment of their desires embodied in glam: sex, ambiguity, excess, decadence; but also defiance of bourgeois conventions, rejection of dominant models, a taste for cross-dressing, and a rethinking of male identity pushed to its most extreme limits. Glam performers strike theatrical poses like 1930s divas, wear makeup, jewelry, wigs, outfits covered in sequins and glitter, boots and space-age jumpsuits. And they brazenly declare their bisexuality, undermining at the root the very concept of identity and sexuality. But what exactly is glam rock? Radio X asks itself. "Glam rock was noisy, theatrical, playful and proudly artificial," the British magazine points out. "Born in the early Seventies, it blended hard guitar riffs with pop melodies, glitter and tinfoil, makeup on men, platform boots and flamboyant stage personas. Artists like David Bowie, T. Rex, Roxy Music and Slade turned the classic rock concert into a full-blown spectacle, blurring the boundaries between male and female style. Glam's impact went beyond music, challenging ideas about identity, fashion and celebrity, and making self-invention an integral part of pop culture. It paved the way for punk, new wave and synth-pop, proving that image and attitude could carry as much weight as music in shaping cultural movements."

So here is the ranking of the 25 best glam rock albums, according to Radio X (full feature here).

25. The Arrows – First Hit
24. The Tubes – The Tubes
23. Sweet – Desolation Boulevard
22. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band – The Impossible Dream
21. Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel – The Psychomodo
20. Be Bop Deluxe – Axe Victim
19. Sparks – Kimono My House
18. Brian Eno – Here Come The Warm Jets
17. KISS – KISS
16. Mick Ronson – Slaughter On 10th Avenue
15. Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
14. Suzi Quatro – Suzi Quatro
13. Jobriath – Jobriath
12. New York Dolls – New York Dolls
11. Queen – Queen
10. 10cc – 10cc
9. Wizzard – Wizzard Brew
8. Alice Cooper – Billion Dollar Babies
7. Iggy & The Stooges – Raw Power
6. Slade – Slayed?
5. Lou Reed – Transformer
4. Mott The Hoople – All The Young Dudes
3. Roxy Music – Roxy Music
2. David Bowie – The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars
1. T. Rex – Electric Warrior

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