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15. Bad Moon Rising (1985): Bad Moon Rising is one of only a small handful of Sonic Youth releases that could be removed from the discography without much altering the band's historical narrative. Less a piece of the puzzle than an outlier, Bad Moon Rising is a cinematically spooky album that suggests what might have been had Sonic Youth continued on as a death-rock band by way of Warhol. It is by no means a failure –- the Lydia Lunch-assisted "Death Valley 69" and the cavernous and bizarre "Halloween" are both more than worth the price of admission –- but it would have been difficult at the time to predict that the band of Bad Moon Rising would follow up this uninviting, bleak record with the first of many masterpieces.