I don't like when people view rock before punk and metal through the lens of merely what was edgy and prescient enough to be protopunk or protometal. But part of what makes looking at this particular moment in time fascinating is seeing how much the psychedelic era opened up this whole market for 'progressive' or 'underground' bands that really blew things up in a lot of exciting directions. Even The Beatles were really incorporating some really avant and lo-fi things into their records, and that probably made room for everyone else to loosen up too. I'd already declared The White Album to be the best Beatles album, so doing a list like this requires some rock calculus like "is Electric Ladyland better than every Beatles album?" and I decided to go ahead and plant that flag, although I guess we'll see if I commit to it when I do an eventual big list for the entire decade. A whole lot of these artists released multiple albums in '68, but just Aretha Franklin, The Byrds, and Miles Davis had double representation on my list.