Few bands burned brighter – or faster – than The Doors.
In just five years, they evolved from brooding Venice Beach outsiders to one of rock’s most mythologised acts, blending poetry, menace, and unearthly musicianship. Jim Morrison’s voice – equal parts shaman, showman, and provocateur – remains at the centre of it all, yet The Doors were never just their frontman. Ray Manzarek’s hypnotic organ, Robby Krieger’s slippery guitar lines, and John Densmore’s jazzy drumming gave them their eerie alchemy.
Even after Morrison’s death in 1971, the surviving members soldiered on, exploring the band’s sound in strange new directions – sometimes inspired, sometimes ill-advised. Later came An American Prayer, their attempt to fuse Morrison’s posthumous poetry with music, closing the circle with mixed results. From raw debut brilliance to posthumous curiosities, here’s every Doors album ranked from worst to best – a journey through light, shadow, and the end.
The Doors albums, ranked
10. Full Circle (1972)
The Doors’ second post-Morrison outing is the sound of three superb musicians searching for purpose. The jazz-funk detours and Latin flourishes show ambition, but not direction. Without Jim’s magnetism or menace, even strong moments like 'The Mosquito' feel oddly weightless. Competent but soulless, Full Circle confirmed what many feared: The Doors’ mystique couldn’t survive without their Lizard King to lead them.
9. Other Voices (1971)
Rushed out just months after Morrison’s death, Other Voices features Manzarek and Krieger taking on vocals with admirable but uneven results. There’s some spirited playing – 'Tightrope Ride' and 'Ships with Sails' have bite – yet the chemistry feels off. It’s The Doors reduced to craft rather than revelation. Though they tried to carry on, the sense of mystery and danger evaporated the moment Jim left the stage.
8. An American Prayer (1978)
Years after Morrison’s death, the surviving Doors reunited to add music to his spoken-word poetry. The result is haunting, uneven, and undeniably fascinating. At times it feels intimate – like a séance with a restless spirit – but often slips into overproduction. 'Ghost Song' and 'Awake' show flashes of transcendence. Not quite an album, not quite an epitaph – it’s an eerie conversation between myth and memory.
7. Absolutely Live (1970)
The only live album produced during the band's existence, Absolutely Live captures The Doors at their most unpredictable – part sermon, part spectacle. Drawn from multiple concerts, it showcases Jim Morrison’s volatile charisma and the band’s telepathic chemistry. 'Break On Through' and 'Back Door Man' crackle with menace, while the epic 'Celebration of the Lizard' finally gets its full airing.
Yet Morrison’s indulgent rants and uneven pacing make it a challenging listen. When it works, it’s electric; when it doesn’t, it drifts into chaos. A flawed but fascinating snapshot of their onstage mystique and madness at full, unfiltered strength.
6. The Soft Parade (1969)
Album number four finds The Doors at their most divisive: strings, horns, and ambition pushed to the brink. The Soft Parade found Morrison battling exhaustion while producer Paul Rothchild pursued orchestral grandeur. 'Touch Me' shimmers with Vegas polish, but elsewhere the excess feels strained. Beneath the brass and gloss lies a band torn between art and commerce. A fascinating failure – overstuffed, overthought, and oddly endearing in its chaos.
5. Waiting for the Sun (1968)
The Doors’ third album captures a band at a crossroads – commercially ascendant yet creatively fraying. With 'Hello, I Love You' they scored a pop hit, but Morrison’s growing erraticism and the band’s exhaustion strained the sessions. The ambitious suite 'Celebration of the Lizard', intended to dominate the record, collapsed under its own weight, leaving only fragments behind.
What emerged instead was a mix of haunting beauty ('Love Street', 'The Unknown Soldier') and uneasy compromise. The record’s gentler tones hint at introspection, but the edge that once felt volcanic now flickers uncertainly. Waiting for the Sun is fascinating precisely because it’s flawed – the sound of The Doors searching for transcendence and finding turbulence instead.
4. Morrison Hotel (1970)
After the excess of The Soft Parade, Morrison Hotel was a gritty, back-to-basics return. 'Roadhouse Blues' and 'Peace Frog' swagger with barroom confidence, while Morrison’s voice regains its growl. Yet, for all its muscular drive, the album lacks the mysticism and danger of earlier work. The Doors had rediscovered their groove, but the transcendence was slipping away. Still, it’s a rugged, blues-soaked reminder of their elemental power.
3. Strange Days (1967)
Released just months after their debut, Strange Days plunged deeper into The Doors’ shadowy, cinematic world. Darker and more textured than its predecessor, it brims with carnival menace, surreal imagery, and apocalyptic poetry. Morrison’s vocals oscillate between detached irony and raw urgency, while Ray Manzarek’s keyboards add a hypnotic, otherworldly sheen.
'People Are Strange' turns alienation into artful whimsy, and 'When the Music’s Over' unfolds as a sprawling, ecstatic descent into chaos. 'Love Me Two Times' juxtaposes sensuality with tension, highlighting the album’s range. Strange Days is a band pushing rock to its outer limits – unsettling, visionary, and utterly singular, capturing the volatile pulse of 1967 Los Angeles and Jim Morrison’s mercurial genius in full, intoxicating force.
2. The Doors (1967)
Few debuts have landed with such force. From the driving urgency of 'Break On Through' to the hypnotic, unsettling finale of 'The End', The Doors announced themselves as dangerous, intellectual, and magnetic. Morrison’s baritone conveyed both seduction and menace, Manzarek’s eerie organ wove spectral textures, and Krieger’s flamenco-tinged guitar added sophistication and edge.
The album fused poetry, sex, and death into a single, cinematic fever dream, where eroticism and mortality intertwine, and language becomes both a weapon and a lure. It challenged listeners’ expectations of rock, demanding attention and engagement. This wasn’t merely a debut – it was a bold manifesto, a declaration that The Doors would explore the shadowy intersections of desire, intellect, and mortality, making rock music a vessel for heightened, sometimes terrifying, human experience.
And the greatest Doors album (by a whisker) is...
1. L.A. Woman (1971)
L.A. Woman represents The Doors at their most muscular, soulful, and self-assured, just edging past their astonishing debut. Where the first album introduced danger, intellect, and poetry, L.A. Woman refines it with grit, groove, and swagger. Morrison’s vocals are at their most world-weary and sensuous, cutting through Manzarek’s bluesy organ, Krieger’s jazzy flamenco lines, and Densmore’s rock-solid drumming.
Tracks like 'Riders on the Storm' and 'Love Her Madly' are timeless, balancing melancholy, eroticism, and menace with effortless cool. The album exudes a downtown Los Angeles nocturnal energy – smoky, desperate, and intimate – a city captured in sound. The band had honed their collective chemistry; each player listens and reacts with precision.
While the first two albums thrill with raw invention, L.A. Woman’s sophistication, emotional depth, and enduring atmosphere give it a slight edge, a testament to a band maturing at the height of their powers and approaching the tragic finality of Morrison’s life.
Love The Doors? Try these 11 albums next
Here are 11 more albums from the late '60s, post-punk, and shoegaze eras that capture similar moods – dark psychedelia, poetic vocals, noirish intensity - to the Doors' dark masterpieces:
1. Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow (1967)
Mixing folk-rock with hallucinatory energy, the tension between light and dark echoes the Doors’ poetic danger.
2. Love – Forever Changes (1967)
Arthur Lee’s apocalyptic, baroque folk-rock masterpiece blends surreal lyricism and orchestral arrangements, perfect for those who adore Morrison’s mix of poetry and menace.
3. Big Brother & The Holding Company – Cheap Thrills (1968)
Janis Joplin’s fiery, blues-soaked vocals capture the same emotional intensity and theatricality as Morrison.
4. The Stooges - Fun House (1970)
The second LP from Iggy Pop and co. channels a Doors-like vibe through hypnotic saxophone and organ textures, raw, menacing energy, and moments of chaotic poetry, evoking the same nocturnal, primal intensity.
5. Teardrop Explodes – Kilimanjaro (1980)
Julian Cope’s vocals have a mysterious, theatrical edge, and the swirling psychedelic pop/rock instrumentation often recalls the eerie textures of the Doors, especially in tracks like 'Sleeping Gas'.
6. The Chameleons – Script of the Bridge (1983)
One of the 1980s' most criminally underrated bands, Manchester's Chameleons made a stunning debut here.Atmospheric, dramatic, and introspective, with baritone vocals and sprawling guitar lines reminiscent of Doorsian moodiness.
7. Echo & the Bunnymen – Ocean Rain (1984)
Bunnymen frontman Ian McCulloch was, like fellow Liverpudlian Julian Cope, a big Doors fan. Perhaps their finest album, '84's 'Ocean Rain' mixes lush orchestration, brooding lyrics, and McCulloch’s baritone with a sense of drama and menace. 'The Killing Moon' in particular channels a Doors-esque nocturnal mystique.
8. The Church – Starfish (1988)
Ethereal guitar textures, baritone vocals, and a nocturnal, cinematic atmosphere make tracks like 'Under the Milky Way' feel reminiscent of Morrison’s romantic, cosmic mystique.
9. The Jesus and Mary Chain – Darklands (1987)
While more minimal and feedback-laden, its brooding melancholy and hypnotic repetition echo the Doors’ sense of nocturnal tension.
10. Fields of the Nephilim – Elizium (1990)
Fields of the Nephilim loved all things gothic, mystical, and apocalyptic, even though (or perhaps because) they hailed from the none-more prosaic surroundings of Stevenage, a new town some 25 miles north of London. Third album Elizium, in particular, channels the dark, poetic, and occult undertones Morrison often explored.
11. Verve – A Storm in Heaven (1993)
The debut album from Verve (later The Verve) channels Doorsian mystique through swirling, hypnotic guitars, expansive sonic landscapes, and Richard Ashcroft’s brooding, poetic vocals – a modern, ethereal echo of Morrison’s nocturnal intensity.
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