Steve Miller Band Albums Ranked Worst to Best
The following list of Steve Miller Band Albums Ranked Worst to Best takes in the full scope of a career that's often seen only through the prism of Miller's best-known era.
An artist who initially sought to meld the blues of Chicago’s South Side with the experimental nature of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, Miller only later hit upon the pop-leaning formula that would hurtle him into the platinum stratosphere and, many years later, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. By the mid-'70s, his brand of good-time rock had become so popular that it all but obscured Miller's interesting – if not always entirely successful – '60s-era explorations.
Along the way, several notables became regular collaborators, including Boz Scaggs and Nicky Hopkins, the session player who played on some of the Rolling Stones' best records. Paul McCartney even sat in once. But the Steve Miller Band was always first and foremost about their namesake leader. Miller had nine Top 40 hits in the decade between 1973-82, including three No. 1 singles. His studio albums racked up more than nine million in U.S. sales – and that's not including the 13-times platinum Greatest Hits 1974–78.
On either side of this period of chart dominance, Miller dove deeper into blues and jazz influences, occasionally offering album-length meditations on the sounds that girded his musical youth. But he'll always be best remembered for his mainstream rock successes; songs like "The Joker" and "Rock'n Me" helped define the classic-rock era.
The challenge was in determining how everything fits into the larger framework of his albums, and which belong at the top of our list of Steve Miller Band Albums Ranked Worst to Best.
Steve Miller Band Albums Ranked
Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso