Meet the most productive musicians in history. How much of their music do you own?

Creativity is a strange and elusive thing. It cannot be summoned upon request or rushed. The muse arrives when she arrives and on her own schedule.

When it comes to music, most artists are best advised to release an album every 18 to 24 months, each containing a dozen songs. There may be a few extra tracks (bonus tracks, B-sides, and a few standalone singles), but in most cases, releasing 20 new songs every two years is considered fairly productive.

But then there are the ultra-prolific types, the ones who are touched by the muse every week, every day, or, at first glance, even every hour. For them, the songs flow like water. It becomes a race to capture as many of those ideas as possible. And once those songs are out, they can be performed live, recorded, and broadcast.

Once the dust settles, they can be bundled into compilation albums and box sets. How do they do ?

King Gizzard first formed in Melbourne, Australia in 2010 and have since built a global following with their psychedelic sounds.

And you’ll never have to wait long to discover new tracks. Since their debut album, 12 Blue Barsin 2012, the band released 24 more full-length albums, averaging two per year — except in 2017 when they released five. And then they repeated that in 2022. That adds up to 15 live albums, three EPs and a remix album.

Oddly enough, we haven’t seen a new album in 2024 yet.

This group is led by Robert Pollard, the composer behind at least 500 Guided By Voices songs and author/co-author of approximately 1,100 others.

Last week, GBV released their 40th studio album since 1983, along with 19 EPs.

There are also four box sets so packed with unreleased material that they are known as the “Suitcases.”

Willie isn’t concerned with speed when it comes to releasing albums; it’s about longevity.

His first solo studio album, …And then I wrotewas published on September 24, 1962. Its 75th, The borderpublished last month.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Willie loves to collaborate with other musicians and he has done so for 26 other albums. He has also written two soundtracks. He has so many songs that he has managed to release 51 best-selling type records.

Oh, and 14 live albums.

Jimi only managed to record three solo albums before he died.

Since then, his time on Earth has resulted in three official live albums and a total of over 90 posthumous releases. This includes 13 studio albums, 28 other live albums, a few soundtracks, 19 retrospective compilations and around twenty official bootlegs.

The only constant in The Fall was their grumpy frontman and singer, Mark E. Smith.

Behind him, the churn rate was incredible. Over the band’s 40-year career, about 66 musicians have come and gone, about a third of whom lasted less than a year.

But even with this chaos, The Fall have released 31 studio albums, an astonishing 59 live records, half a dozen combination studio/live records, 44 compilations and 17 box sets.

Smith may have passed away in 2018, but the live albums kept coming, so we may not be done yet.

I had a friend who vowed to collect every Frank Zappa album. He still works there.

During his lifetime, Frank released 62 studio records, including everything he did with The Mothers of Invention. Since his death in 1993, his family has found enough archival material to release 66—yes, 66!—posthumous albums. The majority of them are live records—the most recent is a 1968 recording made with Whiskey a Go Go in 1968—but still.

And don’t get me started on all the bootlegs out there.

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The Man in Black is an interesting case. Throughout his life he recorded 67 studio albums and four soundtracks.

But those songs have been covered on compilations at least 105 times, making Cash the king of greatest hits compilations. No one will ever beat that record.

Between the mid-1950s and his death in 1977, Elvis released more than 60 records.

But death was very beneficial to the king – at least according to posthumous records. A rough count suggests there have been 87 compilations since August ’77 and another 130 albums from a label called Follow That Dream, which specialized in rare Elvis recordings.

By some accounts, Nana is the world’s best-selling singer (sorry, Tay-Tay) with over 300 million records sold worldwide.

This number of 450 albums (sung in 15 different languages, including Hebrew and Mandarin) is only an estimate. But I’m sure that somewhere in his native Greece, someone is keeping careful records.

The Japanese noise artist has been incredibly prolific over the course of his career (it helps that he specializes in noise rather than traditional music per se; think twice before clicking on that YouTube link to any of his work.)

From 1980 onwards, the records continued to flow with no fewer than 420 studio albums.

Add in the 86 live albums and – well, you’ll need a bigger boat.

Buckethead is the guitarist who rose to fame by appearing on stage with a KFC bucket on his head.

Frankly, it’s difficult to get a clear idea of ​​exactly how many records he’s been on. The best I can do is say that if you go back to 1992 and start counting, you’ll find that his discography includes (as I wrote this) an insane 519 studio albums.

In one year he released 59 full albums. In 2022 I counted about 90 live records.

It’s possible that by the time you get to this point, Buckethead’s output will have exceeded 600 albums.