It's a hell of a lot tougher than I first realized... some years were much easier than I thought they'd be. Although I love making lists, I hate ranking albums over each other. Take 1996 for example, Rage's Evil Empire was way more important to me at the time, but I've since really taken a liking to GYBE!'s F#A#infinity, which was also a musical awakening of sorts for me, albeit several years after its original release.
The main fault of the list is the timing of it all - as a two-year-old I would never have listened to Psychocandy, much less listened to Loveless at eight, but here's the list. It's a retroactive look at a personal musical history and fun to imagine what I might have been listening to if I was 19 in each of those years. I didn't include compilations, like Adam did... compilations don't count!
Anyway, here it is:
1983 Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
1984 Prince - Purple Rain
1985 Jesus & Mary Chain - Psychocandy
1986 Peter Gabriel - So
1987 Prince - Sign O The Times
1988 Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
1989 Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine
1990 Depeche Mode - Violator
1991 My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
1992 Rage Against The Machine - self titled
1993 Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
1994 Nine Inch Nails - Downward Spiral
1995 Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
1996 Tool - Ænima
1997 Radiohead - OK Computer
1998 Massive Attack - Mezzanine
1999 Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile
2000 Queens of the Stone Age - Rated R
2001 Tool - Lateralus
2002 And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead - Source Tags and Codes
2003 Manitoba - Up In Flames
2004 TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes
2005 Queens of the Stone Age - Lullabies to Paralyze
2006 The Rapture - Pieces of the People We Love
2007 Joel Plaskett Emergency - Ashtray Rock
2008 Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
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Honourable mentions/By the hair of their chinny-chin-chin:
1984 Weird Al - In 3-D
1985 New Order - Low-Life
1986 XTC - Skylarking
1988 Cowboy Junkies - Trinity Session
1989 The Cure - Disintegration; The Stone Roses - self titled
1994 Kyuss - Welcome to Sky Valley; Portishead - Dummy
1998 Queens of the Stone Age - self titled
1999 Rage - Battle of Los Angeles
2000 Radiohead - Kid A; Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - self-titled
2002 Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf; Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights; Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
2003 A Perfect Circle - Thirteenth Step; Joel Plaskett Emergency - Truthfully, Truthfully; Cansecos - self titled
2004 DFA1979 - You're a Woman, I'm a Machine; Unicorns - Who Will Cut Our Hair When You're Gone?
2007 LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
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Interesting to note the toughest years to choose were the "university years", which makes sense, given I have never been more immersed in music than those years, when I had a radio show and plenty of disposable income to buy a couple CD's a week. For more on this type of phenomenon, check out Daniel Levitin's "This Is Your Brain on Music", an excellent book that bridges popular music and popular science.
I've really exposed my rockist tendencies here today... time to go outside and enjoy the terrific weather.
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I leave you with one of my highest played tracks (at least according to iTunes) from today's big list, My Bloody Valentine's "Come In Alone". I could listen to this one all day.
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