This is almost unbearably sad. Amy Winehouse released her debut album when she was just 19, singing about her life where the men that she craved love from were all weak, manipulative or needy. She sounds tired, cynical and world weary, and in retrospect it’s easy to see the path that she was already heading down. Nobody should be singing lines like “I’ve forgotten all of young love’s joy” when they’re not even in their twenties. Rest in peace Amy.

It’s amazing to think that David Bowie was still a relative outsider when this album came out and that it sold poorly on first release. There is a lot here that points the way to the directions that his music would take with complex cinematic arrangements on Life on Mars alongside pop classics and lyrics namechecking Warhol, Dylan and the Velvet Underground. My high point is Kooks, an utterly charming song dedicated to his new born son.

This album came out at exactly the wrong time. It’s psychedelic beats and sitar breaks were ten years too late, the indie rock energy and quirky production were ten years too early and the actual release date fell in the middle of a printers strike so the album didn’t get reviewed in Melody Maker and NME. This is a shame, because there’s a lot to enjoy here, with the highlight being the full on rock freak out of Insanely Jealous of You.

I avoided Leonard Cohen for a long time, believing the notion that his music was difficult and depressing. The first is simply not true - this is very easy to listen to, with a minimal approach to instrumentation and Cohen’s distinctive vocals. Whether it’s depressing is open to debate - these are extraordinarily intimate songs dealing with love, loss and deep emotions, and they may well stir memories of your own.

If nothing else, Napalm Death certainly pack a lot into this album whether they are being paid by the song or the note. Twenty eight song songs in just over half an hour has to be some sort of record, with You Suffer clocking in at just 4 seconds. Genuinely amazing. Listening to this is like standing on top of a cliff in a howling storm screaming into the wind and just as bracing. I’ve listened twice today and just put it on again for a third go.

Glorious swampy blues rock!

I know the singles off this album but I don’t think I’ve listened to the album before. I remember thinking that this was sort of easy-listening, but it is actually quite tough going in places with some justifiably angry lyrics about poverty and racial injustice. Reminiscent of singer songwriters from the 60s, but with a definite 80s polish in the sound quality.

This is a remarkable album that rewards repeated listens. It’s complex, layered, playful and chilled at the same time. The samples are eclectic drawing from ambient, jazz, funk and film scores combined in sometimes surprising and unexpected ways. Definitely one to listen to on headphones!

Today's album is Regatta de Blanc by the Police, and another one where I am very familiar with the hits but not the rest. Oddly enough these were the bits that grated, with reggae being sung in a cod Jamaican accent by a white bloke from Tyneside. In contrast the standout for me was the instrumental title track and some of the spikier new wave style songs.

From that iconic opening chord, the energy never lets up on this. A fantastic album, and the first that is all original material with no covers. Side one is effectively the soundtrack to the movie, and side two fills it out with songs written at the same time in a blaze of creativity.

I will admit to not being at all familiar with Solomon Burke, and I’m glad that I had the chance to fix that today. He has an amazing soul voice and this album was delightful from start to finish.

Today’s album is The Queen is Dead by the Smiths which I find really difficult to listen to now. The best that you can say is that 75% of the band aren’t obnoxious racist bigots.

I had always heard that Leonard Cohen had a reputation for being depressing and hard to listen to, but I really enjoyed this album. It’s sparse musically, but the production really allows the voice to shine through. The lyrics are on a par with Bob Dylan with occasional bits of French. There are some nice quirky elements, with whistling and an unusual twanging sort of noise which turned out to be a mouth harp in the background.

Enjoyable big band swing jazz from Count Basie, with a hat tip to Neal Hefti for the arrangements who later went on to write the amazing Batman TV series theme music. There are some nice quirky elements, with whistling and an unusual twanging sort of noise which turned out to be a mouth harp in the background.

A band from the Liverpool area with psychedelic overtones, discovered playing in the Cavern Club - no, not those guys, it’s the Coral. Really enjoyed the mish mash of styles on this, sung in a Jim Morrison sort of style. Opening your debut album with a piratey shanty is a bold move, but one I like. Great stuff!

This is an album that demands and rewards multiple listens, preferably with a guide to the samples. There is so much going on here at so many levels, with samples used in surprising and unexpected ways, paired with some incredibly dense lyrics full of allusions and niche references. I can see why this wasn’t as commercially successful as their first album but it’s much more satisfying. It really does live up to its reputation as the Sergeant Pepper of Hip Hop!

A bluesy, laid back pub rock album was an unlikely candidate for a hit back in 1978 at the height of punk, but somehow Dire Straits got away with it and went on to be one of the biggest rock bands of the 80s with MTV friendly anthems like Money for Nothing. There’s a lot to enjoy here, especially the hit song Sultans of Swing and the atmospheric guitar lines.

Can this album really be over 22 years old? I don’t think I listened to it at the time, but the singles are still as transcendent as ever, especially Clocks. I will always associate this particular sound with that era, just past the turn of the millennium, when the world seemed a relatively hopeful place.

I was a little bit puzzled by this one. They are very much one hit wonders, with the excellent single Another Girl, Another Planet that I think was re-released in the 2010s. The rest of the songs on the album don’t really live up to that, with vaguely punkish guitars and nasal vocals but nothing that stands out.

I’ve really enjoyed listening to some of these albums from the late 70s and early 80s - my record buying at this time was mostly singles rather than albums, so this is a chance to catch up. I love the punky, new wave edge here - Chrissie Hynde definitely brought something unique to the music scene at this time

I’m not sure why I’ve not listened to much Yes before - I think that Jon Anderson’s high pitched singing style may have put me off a bit. This is very much in the 70s prog tradition with long songs and lots of guitar and keyboard noodling, so there’s plenty to enjoy, and the vocals fit in well, so no complaints on that score. It’s surprisingly funky in places too!

Effortlessly cool blend of jazz and Afro beat that fills an entire double album without pausing for breath. Some funky uptempo beats mixed with some slower tracks for variety. Excellent listening.

Interesting mish-mash of styles switching from 60s west coast garage psychedelia to grungy hipster hip-hop with weird sound effects, slide guitars and record scratches. OK, I guess, but it didn’t really grab me.

Enjoyably noisy indie rock album, with grungy vocals (although predating actual grunge by several years). True confession - I avoided this for ages because I thought that Dinosaur Jr were a novelty kids band or something. Doh.

I went into this with no idea what to expect and it turned out to be an enormous amount of fun. In places it sounded like the soundtrack to a Disney film directed by David Lynch featuring flugelhorns, wurlitzers and even a musical saw. Stay around for the hidden bit on the last track!

This was an interesting listening experience - I recognised the single from this but the rest was new to me. Definitely psychedelia with a distinctly English touch somewhere between Pink Floyd and the Kinks. I was interested to see that the band originally formed in one of the pubs that I used to frequent in St Albans, near where I grew up, so technically that makes them a local band for me!

Enjoyably jazzy, breezy pop that’s very easy to listen to but has considerable lyrical depth. The songs flowed into each other pretty seamlessly, making this a good album to let wash over you, picking out something different each time.

The very definition of all killer, no filler - this album set the template for metal through the 80s. Absolutely blistering all the way through, with the only downside is that some of the lyrics haven’t aged particularly well, especially Night Prowler. Highway to Hell also feels bitter sweet, knowing the way that singer Bon Scott was to die less than a year after this was released. Still a classic though

I really enjoyed this quirky album from Manu Chao - according to Wikipedia he sings in French, Spanish, English, Italian, Arabic, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, Greek and occasionally other languages! A veritable one man DuoLingo! Lots of interesting little samples and snippets thrown in too - pretty sure I heard something from Galaxians at one point.

A double-album from an obscure punk band with 43 tracks? It starts with what sounds like jazz funk and then goes into Spanish guitar and a sketchy live recording. Hmmm. It’s a bit of a curate’s egg this album - I really liked the punk tracks, but I felt they were trying a bit too hard to sound like Talking Heads on the funkier tracks.

Full of righteous anger and astute observations on the state of the world and racial injustice. It also rocks hard! Probably one of the best and most influential hip hop albums, but not an easy listen in places.

Definitely one of David Bowie’s best albums, exploring the psyche of his alter ego Ziggy Stardust. Full of absolute classics from start to finish and sounding timeless. Five Years could have been written now (and why didn’t we listen at the time?)

By any measure this is a remarkable piece of work - 14 tracks accompanied by 17 videos and a slew of other bonus features, dropped as a surprise release with no pre-publicity. This is immaculately produced, with lots of interesting audio samples and flourishes, she has an amazing voice and the lyrics are interesting, but polished pop isn’t really my thing.

This is a very appropriate album for Valentine’s Day, and it very much does what it says on the tin. Seven bitter sweet songs about love, with orchestral arrangements, clocking in at just over half an hour. This still has some of the quirkiness and humour of other songs by the Divine Comedy, especially the references to horses! If you were a horse I could ride you through the fields at dawn Through the day until the day was gone

I’m not averse to a bit of prog when I’m in the mood, but to quote Joseph II this really has far too many notes for my taste. It opens with mad, free jazz style guitar noodling and never really calms down at any point. The 18 minute title track has some good parts, but it’s hard work to listen to. Apparently side 2 is supposed to be more folk and rock oriented, but it’s really more of the same, although the songs are a bit shorter. OK, I guess.

This album is from the 80s but it sounds depressingly contemporary, with songs about a crazy world teetering on the brink of destruction, run by right wing politicians and money grubbing billionaires who are “loyal to the Bank of America”. The jangly guitars and Michael Stipe’s nasal vocals have dated a bit more than the lyrics, but I still found myself singing along with and remembering most of the words to “End of the World as we Know It”

This is Public Enemy’s third album and it maintains the furious intensity of their previous release. The samples are even more on the nose in this one, and are self referential in places, talking about the furore that surrounded It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Essential listening but you will feel drained by the non stop sonic assault by the end.

This album has two cover versions of the annoying one hit wonder “Live is Life” by Opus, sung in guttural German accents, which is probably two too many I think. There’s also a cover of One Vision by Queen which ends up sounding like a world war II era propaganda speech. The rest of the album continues the totalitarian theme with pounding drums, grandiose orchestral stings, industrial noise and speech samples. It all makes me feel a bit queasy.

This is an unusual one! It sounds like a 60s folk album, with added orchestration sung by someone with the phrasing of Bjork and the lyrical sensibilities of Nick Cave. There are five longish songs on this album and they require a certain amount of concentration to follow as it’s quite easy to let it wash over you. I’ll be listening again, which should tell you how I feel about it.

This is great! Utterly infectious Afro-Cuban big band jazz from 1957 with a great remaster that sounds as fresh as if it were recorded yesterday. This really put a buzz in a dull Thursday for me!

Listening to this album is almost unbearably poignant. I can’t help remembering the first time I heard it, sharing the experience with friends on the internet, thrilled that we were hearing a new Bowie album. We puzzled at the lyrics, especially the references to death, and enjoyed the cheeky bits about someone grabbing his cock. There were even callbacks to his very first album that we had listened to not long ago. Then we got the news …

Entertaining lo-fi indie-rock with some nice flourishes. The track Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out) really reminded me of New Order for some reason.

Listening to this album is a bit like taking a bath in warm syrup - soothing and relaxing, but ultimately a bit over sweet. Mariah Carey has a gorgeous voice, but she does that thing where it warbles over half a dozen notes in a single word. It’s probably technically very accomplished, but it sounds like a real life autotune in places. The best song was a cover of Prince’s Beautiful Ones and I liked the tweeting bird noises too.

I didn’t really get the Madchester sound first time around, but now with a greater appreciation of 60s music I find I’m enjoying it more, oddly enough. I really enjoy this indie guitar sound that is firmly rooted in the 60s psychedelic tradition with some epic drums holding it all together.

I think I first heard the track La Grange just before ZZ Top became the unlikeliest breakout stars of the MTV video boom with their album Eliminator. I was immediately hooked by this swampy, bluesy, southern rock with a nice mix of foot stompers and slower ballads. The album fits 10 songs into a brisk 33 minutes and is always a fun listen!

Well, this was a treat! Funky beats, black power and a nearly 12 minute cut of Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone that takes up half of side one. Side two is a little more laid back, but still gorgeous listening.

This album takes a smidge of country, a sprinkling of southern rock and a decent helping of good old rock ‘n’ roll to create something that sounds timeless, and if you didn’t know when it was created you probably wouldn’t guess it’s from the musical doldrums of 1976. Pretty good stuff all the way through, and one bona fide classic hit with American Girl at the end of its succinct 30 minute run time.

Very 60s, much psychedelic, so hippy! Is this the first album to name check Green Lantern?

Interesting mix of loops, quirky/provocative lyrics and a huge rumbling bass line. I hadn’t heard this before and was interested to read that they worked with Bowie on a later track which I will be checking out.

I came to this album expecting it to be full of fingers in ears, folderol-diddle-aye-day and songs about hobbits. To be fair, there is a line about “Oh My true love” in one of the songs, but this album has a nice mix of folk and some bluesy riffs on (gasp!) electric guitars. There are also a surprising number of Bob Dylan songs, an entertaining French song with what sounds like a hurdy gurdy and the classic Who Knows Where the Time Goes. Good stuff.

This was a proper curate’s egg of an album. Parts of it were excellent, especially the track Synchronicity II. Sting has mostly stopped singing in a cod Jamaican accent which is a plus point. However, the hits dragged through overfamiliarity (if I never hear I’ll be Watching You again, I won’t complain). There are some real clunking missteps too, such as rhyming Brontosaurus with ‘lesson for us’ and the track Mother is simply awful.

80’s thrash metal passed me by at the time - I always preferred British metal bands like Iron Maiden or Motörhead or the occasional bit of cheeky hair metal, and thought that thrash wasn’t for me. I was expecting this album to be hard work, but it turned out to be surprisingly accessible, with some interesting songs and allusions to the Cthulhu mythos. The whole thing is technically brilliant but it still didn’t completely grab me for some reason.

The 90s were supposed to be a grungy, cynical era, so this unpretentious rock and roll album is something of an outlier. I think this is probably the American equivalent of Pub Rock - no nonsense rock’n’roll, nothing fancy but good fun. A particular highlight is a foot stomping cover of Too Hard to Handle by Otis Redding.

This album was recorded and released shortly before Leonard Cohen’s death, so unsurprisingly it deals with some heavy topics - love, pain and faith, but it manages to sound bright and positive too. Cohen is accompanied by a synagogue choir and a cantor in places, and the whole thing sounds very atmospheric and moving. I’d put this along side Nick Cave for an album to listen to in a darkened room when you have time to meditate on what he is saying.

Remember the other day when I was surprised that the Black Crowes didn’t sound grungy and cynical? Well, I think that Sonic Youth must have got an extra helping to make up for it. They’ve got fuzzed out guitars, laconic vocals, thumping bass and lots of swirling feedback. I don’t think I listened to this at the time, but I liked it a lot. The highlight was Tunic (Song for Karen) which sounds like it was a direct influence on Dry Cleaning’s Magic of Meghan.

The only thing that I know about Steely Dan is that they were named after a steam powered dildo from William Burroughs’ drug classic The Naked Lunch. This album feels very polished and technically accomplished but like several other classic albums on this list, it didn’t grab me. According to Wikipedia this is classed as Yacht Rock, so maybe I need to own a yacht before I can appreciate it properly?

The early 70s must have been a difficult time for the flower power generation - the optimism of Woodstock giving way to the realities of settling down, raising children and (gasp!) maybe even getting a hair cut. This is an entertaining collection of folk rock songs, with the highlight probably being their version of Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock. Not entirely sure why the cover photo has them looking like something from the 1870s though.

If 1990’s Goo anticipated grunge, then 1988’s Daydream Nation harks back to the spiky sounds of post punk and new wave from 10 years previously. This really reminded me of Joy Division in places and I think that Kim Gordon’s bass playing compares well to Peter Hook’s. The only complaint I have about this is that stretching 12 songs over a double album is a bit much - I’d rather they’d cut them down to 3 minute bangers and kept it as a single album.

This is another classic album that I haven’t listened to all the way through before, although I knew most of the tracks especially *that* bit from The Chain which is the theme tune for F1 racing in the UK for some reason. The back story to this album is interesting too, with most of the band going through drug problems and divorces, and somehow still managing to produce a whole load of optimistic love songs. My highlight was Songbird, one that was new to me

I was introduced to Tito Puente by the game Grand Theft Auto : Vice City. Every yellow cab in the Little Havana district would be playing Radio Espantoso and it’s impossible not to enjoy the infectious rhythms. This album is a good introduction to Señor Puente and my particular favourite is Mambo Gozon, but to be honest they’re all good songs, Brent.

This is an effortlessly cool blend of hip-hop, jazz and some very cheeky samples that flows beautifully. I loved the way that the tribe is introduced in the first track, giving the album the feel of a party where you are meeting a bunch of new people who are all happy to include you in their musical meanderings. My favourite track was I left My Wallet in El Segundo which spins a yarn of an ill advised road trip into the desert.

This is another album where my view of it is coloured by the current political leanings of the artist. Van Morrison seems to have turned into a tin foil hat anti-vaxer with his latest album having a song “They Own the Media”. No prizes for working out what he’s alluding to here. I listened to this album anyway and didn’t really enjoy it. File in the bin with Morrissey, Clapton et al.

Brian Eno is probably best known for his iconic ambient albums and his work with some of the biggest names in rock music as a producer over the last fifty years. However, his solo albums are not to be missed. He had an amazing set of collaborators for this album including Robert Fripp, Robert Wyatt and even Phil Colllins playing drums on a couple of tracks. Apparently over a hundred songs were recorded and whittled down to ten for the album over a two year period. The music is interesting and varied, with some funky stuff on the first side and more introspective pieces on side two, giving hints of the ambient material he was also working on at the same time, albeit in smaller chunks. I like this a lot, but on balance I still prefer the previous album Another Green World which is one of my all time favourites.

The Killers scored a massive hit with this debut album, but for some reason it doesn’t seem to stick with me. I’ve only just listened to it, but I doubt that I could hum the chorus to Mr Brightside if I tried. Musically it’s somewhere between Coldplay and Zooroopa era U2, with an oddly nasal sounding vocal effect applied to lead singer Brandon Flowers on all of the songs. Ok I guess, but I probably wouldn’t listen to it again.

Fela Kuti is another artist that I was introduced to by Grand Theft Auto, on the GTAIV soundtrack. This is a brilliant live album, high energy afrobeat with a touch of muscular 70s funk. Fela promises 4 songs at the start of the set, but listen out for a 16 minute bonus track featuring a drum battle between Tony Allen and guest star Ginger Baker from Cream.

I think I avoided this album at the time, because, as the comedian Ed Byrne pointed out, having 10,000 spoons when you need a knife isn’t ironic, it’s just stupid. What would be ironic is if it turned out that a spoon would have done the job anyway. Anyhoo, this album turns out to be good in parts. The slightly fey numbers didn’t really appeal, but there are some much harder hitting tracks about dysfunctional relationships that hit home for me, especially the non-radio version of You Oughta Know which was excellent.

Usually with these albums, I listen to them and then have a look at the accompanying Wiki page. In this case, I read about them first and apparently they nearly split up in a dispute about royalties before they’d even recorded the album, with lead singer Perry Farrell claiming 50% of the rights with another 12.5% on top for the music. The band disagreed. That’s probably the most interesting thing about this generally unremarkable 80s alt rock album. YMMV.

I didn’t really listen to Radiohead in the early 2000s even though, on paper, they were right up my street. I think it’s taken a good number of years for these albums to sink in, especially this one. I love the tape loops, obscure electronic instruments, glitchy effects, raw guitars and the concise but sonically dense songs. It’s not quite at five stars, but I think it will get there over time.

From the name of the band I was expecting some avant garde Belgian jazz from the 1950s, and to be fair there are some enjoyably weird bits to this, but it turned out to be more of a proto punk garage rock album and a fun listen. The highlight is probably the title track which shamelessly borrows the bass riff from Neal Hefti’s 1960s Batman theme tune.

When I was younger, I had a ‘Best of the Doors’ compilation which was a pretty good selection of tracks from all eras of the band. However, the track order is burnt into my synapses so that when I hear Roadhouse Blues I expect it to be followed by LA Woman, which is kind of jarring when Waiting for the Sun comes on. Taken as a whole, this is a solid blues rock album although Jim Morrison’s voice sounds much older than the 27 years old he was at the time.

Aretha Franklin was not just the Queen of Soul, but one of the greatest vocalists of all time. This album bridges the gap between gospel and soul, showing that when all is said and done, love songs are the same no matter who you are singing them to. The music sensibly does not get in the way of Aretha’s voice, which soars with emotion on every song.

This was a band that I hadn’t heard of before and the album was a bit of a mish mash of different styles - a sort of “Now That’s What I Call Generic 60’s Music!”. There was a bit of unthreatening R&B, a side step into West Coast garage, a spot of Spanish guitar and even some birds (or should that be Byrds) tweeting at the start of one track. I’m guessing that they were more popular in the USA but they only had one hit in the UK.

This album was overshadowed by two tragedies - Kurt Cobain’s suicide a week before it was released and the death of bassist Kristen Pfaff two months later from a heroin overdose. There was also a deeply misogynistic rumour that Cobain had ghost written some or all of the tracks on the album. However, this album is easily strong enough to stand on its own. It’s post grunge rock with some very on the nose lyrics. Good stuff.

True confession - I always assumed that Aerosmith were an 80s metal band and I had no idea that they started in 1970! Anyhoo, this album is a gloriously swaggering 70s classic with nods to the Who, the Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath and the Beatles. They even channel George Formby on one song about whipping out his 10 inch … record. The original version of Walk This Way also shows them to be ahead of their time, anticipating quirky hip hop rhythms.

Another album where the artist was new to me and another case where they died tragically young. This is very much in the vein of 60s singer/songwriters but some of the lyrics are definitely something that wouldn’t have appeared in those days. By all accounts this was more of a hit after Smith’s passing, making some of these songs sound very poignant.

The turning point from the hippy 60s into the cynical 70s produced a lot of great music and this album is no exception. I was more familiar with Dolly Parton’s version of the title track than the original, but it’s still as bafflingly obtuse as ever. “Oh, Lonesome Me” is a masterpiece of self pity and staying in, but the highlight is “Southern Man” - a blistering attack on racism in the Deep South with some rocking guitar work.

This is one for the ‘what were they thinking?’ files, both for the artist and the compilers of the list. Side one is some pretty standard 60’s psychadelia, but side 2 turns out to be a 19 minute, full on, acid jazz rock freak out that the band themselves described as "a waste of a side of an album". It’s got harpsichord, harmonica, an extended drum solo and a bit where he starts screaming. I quite liked it, but I’m not sure I’d listen to it again!

Amiable late 60s folk rock, probably steering more to the folk end of the spectrum. A nice accompaniment to the hour I spent stuck in traffic on the way back from work, although I was tempted to skip the track labelled as a dirge, which did what it said on the tin!

The previous album was a huge success, but for this one the band got carried away in the studio and produced too much material for a single album so they padded it out with unused songs from previous albums to make it a double. This means that there are a lot of self indulgent tracks on here that all go on a little bit too long or don’t fit, like the funky Stevie Wonder inspired Trampled Under Foot. Kashmir is still a monster track though!

This is an astonishing collection of songs, ranging from light jazz to bluesy love songs and the white hot anger of Four Women - showing different perspectives on the lingering evil of slavery and racism in America. The common thread is Nina Simone’s voice, a husky burr that soars into the stratosphere when it needs to.

Air are Daft Punk’s older, cooler cousins - smoking Gitanes behind the bike sheds and wearing stripy jumpers in a post modern, ironic way. They take the lush soundscapes of 60’s Nouvelle Vague cinema, add bloopy 70s modular synths and classic moogs, and top it off with some banging dance tracks (Sexy Boy and Kelly Watch the Stars being highlights). If you have the means to play it, the Dolby Atmos mix of this sounds immense!

I think that this another case of mistaken identity. I assumed that Super Furry Animals were a novelty kids band, like the Wombles. However, they turn out to be a sort of Welsh psychedelic, shoe gazy, dubstep version of the Beach Boys with songs morphing from mellow piano introductions into glitchy electronica without pausing for breath. One track even features Paul McCartney chewing celery in the background. Enjoyably bonkers!

This is pretty much by the numbers post punk with agit prop lyrics about IRA prisoners, situationist politics and violence on TV. At one point he genuinely sings “Love’ll get you like a case of Anthrax and that’s something I don’t wanna catch”. The high point is probably the song about drugs (where he has a choice between Asprin and Paracetamol).

Having an eponymous album name is a sure sign of self confidence. This band know what they are doing, with 12 songs blasted out in under 30 minutes in an entertaining mix of thrash, proto-rap and country, apparently inventing the genre cowpunk in the process. Good fun!

Ok, I know that Bono is a pompous arse and that the band have turned avoiding tax into an art form, not to mention that I had an ex that played this all the time, but the opening to this album still makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I suspect that is mainly due to the production work of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois who conjure huge soundscapes evoking a mythic America. The wiki is a fun read especially Eno threatening to burn the master tapes!

It’s amazing to think that David Bowie was still a relative outsider when this album came out and that it sold poorly on first release. There is a lot here that points the way to the directions that his music would take with complex cinematic arrangements on Life on Mars alongside pop classics and lyrics namechecking Warhol, Dylan and the Velvet Underground. My high point is Kooks, an utterly charming song dedicated to his new born son.

New York hip hop has a very distinct sound, compared to the stuff being created on the West Coast at this time. This has a languid feel, almost jazz like in places, but we are definitely in the heart of New York for this. The lyrics hit hard, obviously from growing up in some very tough projects, but there are lighter tracks too with songs about chilling out with friends. Influential but probably not one I would listen to regularly.

This album definitely hits hard while being easy to listen to. Songs about racial injustice, poverty, war and pollution by one of the great soul voices. Hugely influential at the time and it still is relevant today.

Tedious, overblown, edgelord nonsense from someone that unsurprisingly turned out to be a massive wrong’un.

This is a remarkable album by any standard, containing three of the greatest protest songs ever written and setting the radical agenda for the sixties and beyond. For it to be just the second album from a little known 22 year old singer songwriter lifts it even further. This album also contains some self deprecating humour and lovelorn ballads, as well as a lovely, downbeat cover of Corina, Corina which was a highlight for me. Simply essential listening.

On the track Psycho Killer, Talking Heads managed to sound like a postpunk band before punk had even happened. Tina Weymouth’s mammoth bassline and David Burns quirky vocals make this a classic. However the rest of the album doesn’t quite live up to this high point. I think I prefer their subsequent Brian Eno produced albums.

When Boy George first appeared on Top of the Pops back in the early 80s there was a brief wave of moral panic about ‘gender bending’ pop stars from the right wing press, recycling the same headlines they’d printed about Bowie and Bolan from 10 years previously. However, he soon silenced the critics with a series of top ten hits and a second album that was full of bright, soulful pop with backing vocals from Helen Terry giving a Motown vibe. Lovely stuff.

This starts out like a simple folk album but rapidly mutates into something stranger bringing in multi-tracking, sound effects, weird instruments, psychedelic lyrics and a 13 minute concept piece about an amoeba. Very 60s but it makes you wonder what was in that mushroom stew they were eating.

This is possibly Björk’s most restrained and emotionally vulnerable album, with electronica dialed back in favour of swirling string arrangements and the lyrics describing the aftermath of a relationship breakdown. It definitely takes you on an emotional journey and I will be checking out the accompanying video art pieces that went with it and passed me by at the time.

Another one that bounced off me at the time, probably due to silly band name syndrome (I was reading Smashing in the UK sense of the word). I was expecting a scrappy grunge album but actually got a well produced post rock thing instead, even featuring (gasp!) string arrangements on some tracks. I mostly enjoyed it, but I think I probably would have loved it if it was shorter and scrappier.

The 60s were all about the Beatles vs The Stones, so it’s interesting to compare this album with Let It Be. Both were recorded in makeshift studios with the bands in a fractious state. However the Beatles finished theirs in a couple of weeks, and punched up their sound with Billy Preston on keys, whereas the Stones took a year and sound hungover with tired blues songs. A couple of classic tracks here and the remastering definitely helps. Mostly average.

Oooh, this was an interesting one! Elements of shoe gaze, trip hop and a touch of electronica. According to Wikipedia they started as a dance music group with a hit single before a fire in their studio destroyed all of their work in progress, prompting them into a complete change of direction. It reminded me a little of Coldplay, but predates them by a couple of months. I like this a lot!

A seventy minute album from Bruce Springsteen about the fallout from 9/11 is a daunting prospect. From just about any other artist this might have come across as preachy or jingoistic, but the Boss manages to make this thoughtful and considered with light and hope amongst the darkness. The E-Street band are back in business for this album too, which really lifts everything. The highlight is My City of Ruins, dedicated to his beloved Asbury Park.

The disappearance of Richey Edwards in 1994 casts a very long shadow over this album. I get the feeling that the band wanted to turn this up to 11 and throw everything into it, but the result sounds a bit bombastic and, well, preachy at times. It really is very loud and worthy, but the quieter track Small Black Flowers that Grow in the Sky (written by Edwards) shows what the album might have been if he was still present.

Any album that starts with a ‘1-2-3-4’ is an automatic winner for me. I only knew the insanely catchy hit ‘Alright’ but I enjoyed the bouncy punk energy of this, combined with a bit of cheeky chappy humour in an 80s Madness style. They even channel 60s Bowie on We’re Not Supposed To with daft gnome voices. The final track Time to Go is a good closer, and a strong contender for a song to play at a funeral.

Well, this is cheery. Pain, degradation, despair and hopelessness set to music that sounds like being trepanned with an electric drill. I imagine. Actually, I’m being hard on this. I do like harsh, industrial electronica - my introduction to NiN was via the Quake soundtrack and I really like the movie and TV soundtracks that Reznor is doing now. Hurt (at least the Johnny Cash cover) is a masterpiece. This is just a bit *too* grimdark for my tastes.

This is the album where Bob went electric, much to the annoyance of some of his die hard fans. I’m not sure why it was such a big deal, but the added punch really steps things up on side one, especially on Subterranean Homesick Blues where Bob effectively invents rap and the lyric video at the same time. Side two has some fine songs too, especially the classic Mr Tambourine Man. Highlight is On the Road again where he wakes up with frogs in his socks!

Coming to this album cold, my initial impressions were of a spiky, post-punk record with a strong Siouxie and the Banshees influence. I then read that the band were actually from Georgia, USA and started noticing equal amounts of REM and even a bit of B52s going on. This was interesting rather than essential for me.

This is an album that does exactly what it says on the tin. Effortlessly cool, without being arch. The recordings on this date from 1949 and 1950 but sound vibrant and fresh. A perfect place to start for anyone who thinks that jazz is not for them.

Gloriously swampy, blues rock that bounces along in a fun way, even as the lyrics deal with down and out musicians, doomed relationships and deadly weather. The album fits nine songs in just under half an hour and is a great way to kick off a rainy bank holiday weekend!

After a disappointing tour of the UK in 1972, Bob Marley and his band were broke and didn’t even have enough for the air fare back home to Jamaica. Chris Blackwell of Island Records advanced them £4000 which got them their tickets and enough left over to put this record together in a decent studio. The result is one of the greatest reggae records of all time, mixing songs about slavery and oppression with gloriously blissed out love songs. Simply gorgeous!

Listening to this again, it’s pretty clear that Spinal Tap really wasn’t all that much of a parody. When the opening track bangs on about being a ‘back door man’ giving every inch of his love there isn’t really any doubt about what he’s singing about. We also get a folky song about Gollum making off with the hero’s girlfriend in Mordor which I don’t remember from the books. Oh, and let’s not talk about the drum solo. The remastered version sounds good though

The vocals on this are a curious mix of 60s Bowie, Ray Davies and Marc Bolan, and it’s no surprise to find that their biggest hit was the Bowie written All The Young Dudes and that they ended up working extensively with Mick Ronson. Entertaining 70s glam but not really at the same level as the acts that influenced them.

This album feels more like jazz noodling and less like the overblown yacht rock of Aja, so I think I probably enjoyed it more (for some values of ‘enjoyed’).

Somehow I had avoided listening to the biggest selling UK album of the 21st century until now, and it’s a remarkable piece of work. Written by Adele when she was just 21 (hence the title) in the aftermath of what sounds like a toxic relationship with a much older man, it naturally deals with pain, heartache and redemption. Musically, it’s a mix of genres but I found that I preferred the simpler tracks with the highpoint for me being ‘I Found a Boy’

This was the album that saw the Beatles transition from a jangly Merseybeat band into something much more ambitious. With the help of George Martin, they started playing with different instruments (sitars and fuzzed out bass), genres (country!) and studio effects. Lyrically they were a long way from hand holding romance with songs about dysfunctional relationships and existential angst, and the still shocking Run For Your Life as an album closer.

So, the legend of this album is that in 1975 an 18 year old student called Vera Brandes somehow persuaded noted jazz pianist Keith Jarrett to play a late night gig at the prestigious Köln Opera house. Due to a mix up, an old, out of tune rehearsal piano was set up on stage with no time to get a replacement. Jarrett turned up late at the gig, suffering from back pain and with no time to eat, but still agreed to go ahead despite everything. In this recording, you can hear Jarrett work with the limitations of the piano - avoiding the out of tune high notes and using different techniques to get better bass notes. He improvised for over an hour, including an encore, with the result being one of the biggest selling jazz albums of all time. There’s an excellent Cautionary Tales podcast episode that goes into more detail about the background to this unique performance: https://timharford.com/2019/12/cautionary-tales-ep-7-bowie-jazz-and-the-unplayable-piano/

All that I knew about Frank Zappa before listening to this album is that he had crazy hair, a crazy mustache and crazy names for his kids. Appropriately enough, this album is a crazy mix of jazz, funk, rock and psychedelia that bounces around all over the place. The album is mostly instrumental with crazy lyrics from crazy Captain Beefheart on just one song. Technically very accomplished, but it’s all a bit much.

Right Here, Right Now, Rockafeller Skank and Praise You are amongst the very best dance tracks of the 90s taking samples of classic riffs and putting monster beats and breakdowns behind them. Unfortunately they are also the best things on this album by a long way. I could really have done with out hearing the track ‘Fucking in Heaven’ immediately after the first two bangers. Out of the non hit tracks, the highpoint is an old school acid track at the end.

12 songs in 25 minutes has to be some sort of record! These are all perfectly formed snippets of rock and roll that sound as fresh today as when they were recorded nearly 70 years ago. I hadn’t realised that there are also two songs written by Roy Orbison in here as well, and you can definitely hear his style. The world lost a unique talent on the day the music died.

This was the album where the original 3 Isley Brother officially recruited their two younger siblings Ernie and Marvin, plus brother in law Chris Jasper to play a variety of instruments, and the result is gloriously funky with some amazing guitar work on show. If you have the means to play it, then the quad mix of Summer Breeze is an absolute highlight.

For ages I had Wilco and Wilko Johnson confused, and wondered why so many Americans were excited about a legendary pub rock guitarist from Canvey Island. Today I found out that they are actually an amiable alt-rock band with country leanings and they were generous enough to put out this double album at the regular price. This didn’t set my world on fire, but it was a good way to spend an hour or so.

I think I might be in love. This is a gloriously sensual bossa nova album from Brazil sung by Bebel Gilberto and backed with electronica rhythms that veer into trip hop in places. There’s a tragic back story to the record on the Wikipedia page, but the result is well worth a listen and is one of the rare 1001 Albums that isn’t in the white male American/British rock demographic.

Depeche Mode somehow went from a squeaky clean and slightly effete synth pop band to a sleazy, leather clad, stadium filling behemoth honking out thumping diatribes against religion with Personal Jesus, and shimmering gloomscapes about depression with Enjoy the Silence. Turns out that all it took was lots and lots of those tasty, tasty drugs. The track ‘Clean’ is a little bit on the nose, although the Pink Floyd inspired bass line is excellent.

Well, this is delicious! In 1964 jazz musician Stan Getz teamed up with guitarist/vocalist Joāo Gilberto (father of the very lovely Bebel Gilberto) for this album of Bossa Nova classics. The legend goes that they needed someone who could sing a verse in English for their version of The Girl From Ipanema, so they drafted in Astrud Gilberto (then wife of Joāo) whose breathy vocals made this a worldwide hit. Apparently she only got $120 for it!

1979 was a strange time in Britain. The energy of punk had evaporated and no one yet knew what to expect from the 80s. This album captured a particular zeitgeist with icily precise production and the immense bass line of Peter Hook. I was never really a fan of Ian Curtis’s gloomy, monotone vocals but this really was something quite unique. A shoutout for one of the most iconic album covers of all time, showing the radio pulses from a neutron star.

The music of The Fall veers wildly between sublime genius and borderline unlistenable, often within the same album, and in the case of the track Paintwork, in the same song. Mark E Smith famously took the master tape back to his hotel room and then accidentally recorded part of an Open University lecture on stars over part of the song. They kept it in, and somehow it all works. This is a pretty good starting point for anyone who is Fall curious.

Every decade or so, an album comes out that defines the sound of the musical zeitgeist and breaks out to be a massive hit. However, these albums usually leave me cold. I listened to this, but tbqhwy it’s just dull and never catches fire in any way. I imagine that this is what middle class people listened to at dinner parties in the year 2000. I never went to any dinner parties, which might explain why this didn’t engage me. Your mileage may vary.

I had it my head that TLC were a girl pop band from the mid 2010’s, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover this slice of engaging R&B with some quirky interludes. The wiki page has the obligatory back story of drugs and crazy stuff, including Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopez setting fire to her boyfriend’s shoes and burning down her mansion. Yikes. Highlight is a cover of Prince’s If I Was Your Girlfriend.

I avoided Leonard Cohen for a long time, believing the notion that his music was difficult and depressing. The first is simply not true - this is very easy to listen to, with a minimal approach to instrumentation and Cohen’s distinctive vocals. Whether it’s depressing is open to debate - these are extraordinarily intimate songs dealing with love, loss and deep emotions, and they may well stir memories of your own.

How did The Who go from amphetamine fuelled 3 minute mod rock bangers to writing a double album rock opera, complete with overtures, undertures, a symphony orchestra, sex, drugs, pinball and a comedy pervert Uncle? This is quite a piece of work - overblown and rambling, but with some genuinely thrilling moments. I think that I prefer the songs as part of the film, which at least puts them in some sort of context so you can follow the story (such as it is).

In 1982 Dexy’s Midnight Runners had a massive hit with Come On Eileen, everyone started dressing like a tramp in torn dungarees and wedding discos were never the same again. Apart from the hit, this is an interesting mix of Northern Soul and folky fiddle playing played with a po faced intensity that’s a little bit disturbing. I probably don’t need to hear this again until the next time I’m invited to a wedding.

I’ve been curious about this album for a while, as it gets a regular name check on the Ken and Robin podcast as an essential feature of an RPG night. Turns out it’s a live rock album that ticks all of the tropes including a ‘Hello San Francisco!’ to a crowd of politely whooping American college students. The high point is a cheesy voice box guitar effect. The low point is a cover of Jumping Jack Flash that bears no discernible relation to the original tune.

Anthrax are justifiably in the top 4 thrash bands of the 80s, if not all time. This album was produced in a clean, no-nonsense style that allows all of the guitars, drums and vocals to be well separated and clearly audible. The lyrics cover environmental collapse, grief, the plight of native Americans, as well as two tracks based on Stephen King stories and a phenomenal song about Judge Dredd from someone who is a mega fan of 2000AD. Enormous fun!

Many bands adopt stage personas, hiding behind elaborate makeup or costumes. Gorrillaz go one step further, being an entirely virtual band with cartoon avatars drawn in Jamie Hewlett’s distinctive style. Gimmicks aside, this is pretty good stuff - lo fi beats and samples, with a bit of rap thrown in, although I wonder how successful it would have been if it hadn’t been obvious from the start that Damon Albarn was behind it all.

This was an unexpected treat for a Monday morning! This was the album that saw the Temptations add a psychedelic twist to the Motown funk sound, played with impeccable swagger. The highlight is the 9 minute epic Runaway Child, Running Wild which features Hammond organ and plenty of wah wah guitar riffs. Groovy!

Let’s talk about the good stuff first. This album came out the year before Exiles on Main Street and is musically much superior. There are some really nice (but not exactly original) blues riffs on here. However, it’s impossible to review this without addressing the steaming great racist, misogynist elephant in the room. Brown Sugar is the most gratuitously offensive song to ever hit the charts, and how it still gets played is beyond me.

It’s rare to get an album that is completely new to me that I listen to twice in a row, but this is one of these. This debut from M.I.A takes glitchy, catchy dance beats and layers on lyrics that range from cheeky to sharply political. Maya Arulpragasam experienced life as a refugee from the violence in Sri Lanka when she was just 11 and this plays out in her music, but it’s done with irrepressible charm and wit. I absolutely love this!

After the sprawling rock opera double album Tommy, Pete Townshend came up with an even more ambitious project - Lifehouse, a dystopian sci fi concept album with a movie and an interactive live show. For various reasons, the project foundered but The Who rescued some of the songs for this album. The highlights are the first and last tracks - Baba O’Reilly and Won’t Get Fooled Again, both featuring epic modular synth riffs that elevate them to classic status.

Nick Drake is another artist like Leonard Cohen with an intimidating reputation. Unlike Cohen, he died at the tragically young age of 26 only having sold 4000 copies in total of his albums. This debut album is simply produced folk, focusing on guitar and vocals with some restrained strings and percussion on some of the tracks. Lyrically, there are no prizes for guessing what the track ‘Memories of Mary Jane’ is about. Highpoint is a song about sheds!

I was today years old when I discovered that Bat Out of Hell is based on a sci-fi rock opera version of Peter Pan, albeit with more songs about sex and motorbikes, and not so many about one handed pirates and crocodiles with alarm clocks. This album is a blast though, with Meat Loafs reliably humongous operatic vocals and Jim Steinman’s over the top score. Highlight is surprisingly filthy song using baseball as a metaphor for risky teenage sex in a car.

This is a big old slice of funktastic 80’s cheese with a side of soul from one of the great soul voices that sounds like it would be great for a romantic night in. Sadly though, the songs don’t quite measure up to the singer. On “If You Think You’re Lonely Now” our hero whines about “his woman” complaining that he’s never there and is broke all the time, so he does the passive aggressive thing of threatening to leave her. Lovely.

This is a great debut album and an economical 34 minutes in length. Post punk, alt-rock with a raw edge perfectly captured by the late Steve Albini’s production. There was evidently a bit of tension between the band and the producer, shown through some of the studio chatter that’s included here, but it seems to have pushed them to greater heights. Highlight is the track Vamos (Surfer Rosa) which is sung half in Spanish. Great stuff.

By the early 70s, the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle had taken its toll on Jim Morrison, leaving him looking and sound considerably older than his 28 years. His voice had deepened to a husky burr, which suited the blues stompers that the rest of the band gravitated to. This is probably the best of the Doors albums, with the highlights being Riders on the Storm and the spoken poetry of WASP. Jim passed away in Paris just over two months after the album was released.

In the late 1970s, Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin, and Margot Olavarria were at the infamous last gig by the Sex Pistols and realised that they could do a lot better than the shambolic mess on stage. They played gigs for a couple of years, tweaking their sound to pop punk (with a hint of surf guitar) before releasing this phenomenal debut album in 1981. We Got The Beat is the ultimate new wave banger and is guaranteed to get you moving!

This album pioneered sampling techniques, making found sounds like radio announcers and ranting preachers the lead vocal on top of a mix of Afrobeats and Middle Eastern rhythms. Eno and Byrne did take the time to clear the samples that were used, although a recording of part of the Qu’ran on the original release was removed from later pressings on grounds of religious sensitivity. This still sounds startlingly contemporary, despite coming out 40+ years ago

All too frequently with these albums we see someone producing an amazing album before succumbing to the rock n roll lifestyle. Iggy Pop did it the other way round, battling a heroin addiction with the help of his pal David Bowie who not only helped him get clean and collaborated on a couple of albums but paid for some expensive dental work, hence the goofy smile on the cover! The highlight is the thrilling title track, forever linked with Trainspotting.

This was a completely new one to me! The album starts with the series of nuclear weapons tests carried out by India and explores issues of identity and religion against a backdrop of international tension. Musically, it’s a mix of trip hop electronica and traditional Indian instrumentation and voices, and is an enchanting listen, despite the grim and thought provoking subject matter. It finishes with Oppenheimer’s infamous quote from the Bhagavad Gita.

I was introduced to LCD Soundsystem via the video game GTA IV, which made good use of the track Get Innocuous! mixing the in game gunfire to the staccato drums. The album matches quirky, danceable beats with a flat vocal style that shares a lot of DNA with New York acts like Talking Heads. Apparently, James Murphy hated recording his vocals so covered the studio with tin foil because reasons, hence the album name. So hipster. Much New York. Very Dance.

Fun fact! Boards of Canada aren’t from Canada, but are actually a pair of brothers from Scotland producing a great mix of warm 70s modular synth sounds with samples and glitchy beats layered on top. I always make the mistake of thinking this is an ambient album but the beats creep up on me and I get sucked into the rhythm. Great stuff. Highlight is Aquarius which samples counting and giggles from Sesame Street in an enchanting way.

Sometime around 1976 my Dad bought home a proper music centre with two cassette tapes - a “super sounds of stereo” sampler and Stevie Wonder. I can still remember the experience of hearing the room filled with this marvellous music, hearing each instrument in its own place on the sound stage. The highlight on this for me is Sir Duke, paying tribute to Duke Ellington and other jazz greats.

This is an oddity and an album that I have never heard before. It has three classics (America, Mrs Robinson and Hazy Shade of Winter), quirky songs about zoo animals and extended sound clips of old people talking. Not what I would pick for a great album, especially one less than half an hour in length.

This is almost unbearably sad. Amy Winehouse released her debut album when she was just 19, singing about her life where the men that she craved love from were all weak, manipulative or needy. She sounds tired, cynical and world weary, and in retrospect it’s easy to see the path that she was already heading down. Nobody should be singing lines like “I’ve forgotten all of young love’s joy” when they’re not even in their twenties. Rest in peace Amy.

I missed this album at the time - I think there must have been other stuff going on in September of 2001. First impressions are of a Britpop band trying to sound American. Second impressions came during the track New York City cops (understandably dropped from later re-releases) when it turned out to be an American band doing Britpop about five years late. Not bad though, with some Stooges style vibes. Minus points for a truly awful album cover though.

This is an oddity. Like everyone else, I know all of the Bee Gees late 70s disco classics but I was completely unaware of this album from 1971 which for some reason seems to be themed around famous battles of the Napoleonic era. There are some reasonably enjoyable tracks here (and the odd clunker) but nothing essential. Even their voices don’t sound quite as falsetto as they would go on to be. Great cover though!

Woody Guthrie was an amazingly prolific songwriter, leaving a collection of over a thousand songs in a box after his death. Apparently Bob Dylan went looking for them in the late 60s but it took another 40 years before Guthrie’s daughter uncovered the trove and passed the works over to Billy Bragg and the band Wilco to set some of them to music. The end result is inspiring, uplifting and thoroughly enjoyable, and the politics are as relevant as ever.

I enjoyed the first album from Doves and this one moves on slightly from the previous shoe gazey sound with nods to prog alongside some bouncy, radio friendly numbers. The highlight is M62 Song which takes elements of Moonchild by King Crimson layered with traffic noises recorded under a motorway flyover in the middle of the night.

This is arguably one of the greatest albums of all time, hitting home on just about every level. It opens with a school register being taken and the theme continues with a young woman figuring out life, love and everything, drawing from diverse musical influences and producing something that sounds almost effortlessly perfect. This was Hill’s only solo album but it stands as a genre defining achievement for all time.

Somehow Willie Nelson has managed to fit a whole Western tale of love, betrayal and revenge into 15 songs and 34 minutes without ever feeling rushed or constrained. This is evocative music, recalling dusty mesas and smoky saloons, a million miles away from the shmaltzy strings and glittering rhinestones of Nashville. Western music for outlaws!

This album came out at exactly the wrong time. It’s psychedelic beats and sitar breaks were ten years too late, the indie rock energy and quirky production were ten years too early and the actual release date fell in the middle of a printers strike so the album didn’t get reviewed in Melody Maker and NME. This is a shame, because there’s a lot to enjoy here, with the highlight being the full on rock freak out of Insanely Jealous of You.

After an oddly misjudged introduction from Busta Rhymes, Missy Elliot steps up to show the boys how Hip Hop is done. This is a highly accomplished debut album with a lot of depth and some surprising twists. The highlight is probably an unexpectedly cheeky cover of Pass the Dutchie which becomes a song about the joys of smoking dope.

If nothing else, Napalm Death certainly pack a lot into this album whether they are being paid by the song or the note. Twenty eight song songs in just over half an hour has to be some sort of record, with You Suffer clocking in at just 4 seconds. Genuinely amazing. Listening to this is like standing on top of a cliff in a howling storm screaming into the wind and just as bracing. I’ve listened twice today and just put it on again for a third go.

Every new decade brings something that kicks against the excesses of the previous one. By the end of the 80s we’d grown tired of shoulder pads and overproduced corporate rock, so this album in 1991 was like a breath of slightly whiffy air. It still holds up (mostly) although in retrospect the references to guns on this are painful. It defined a genre, but we’ve yet to see a grunge revival. Anyone who doesn’t like this is a lamestain cob nobbler!

This album was my introduction to heavy metal, and what a great introduction it was too! Nerdy references to cult sci-fi like Children of the Damned and the Prisoner, songs about marauding Vikings and Wild West battles, occult spookiness and a suspiciously detailed knowledge of the price list of infamous brothel madam Cynthia Payne. The music is top notch all the way through, with galloping drums, virtuoso guitar, solid bass , and Dickinson’s soaring vocals.

Apparently Magnetic Fields frontman Stephen Merrit was sat in a gay bar in New York listening to Stephen Sondheim songs played on piano one day and set himself the challenge of writing 100 love songs. He scaled back the original target to 69 songs (fnarrr, fnarr) but this is still a monumental achievement. These are songs about love in all its varieties, each one in a different style with the three album set lasting just shy of three hours. Amazing stuff!

I think that I avoided this one at the time because I assumed that it was just slightly twee French pop. Turns out it’s actually slightly twee Scottish pop, but it won me around with a mix of light, summery tunes and lyrics ranging from the wistful to some pointed jabs at religion. I particularly liked the second track “Seeing Other People” which reminded me of Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown theme music with a bouncy, jazzy feel. Lovely stuff.

To a teenage pop-punk fan in 1994, this probably sounded like the most important album in the history of the world, ever! In retrospect, it’s full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, sung by people whose greatest fear was that someone might call them a trendy asshole. It’s at its most fun on the middle eastern themed ‘Come Out and Play’ and the bouncy ska of ‘What Happened to You?’

There comes a time in the life of every rock band when someone discovers a synth in the corner of the studio and wonders what happens when they start randomly twiddling the knobs. In Van Halen’s case this gave us the worldwide monster hit Jump but it’s clear on this album where the rest of the band pushed back for more traditional rock songs about women’s legs and hot teachers. It’s no surprise that they broke up with ‘musical differences’ a year later.

Some cities have a distinctive sound, and Athens, Georgia is one of them. REM were one of the bands that defined that sound - solid bass, punchy drums, jangly guitars and laconic vocals with lyrics ranging from the esoteric to the surreal. Michael Stipe has said that he still doesn’t know what Pilgrimage is about and he wrote it. Highlight is Radio Free Europe which one of my Athens friends sent me on a mix tape of local music back in the day.

When the Beatles started going weird, someone at NBC television had the bright idea of creating a family friendly boy band from scratch for a tv show, and maybe put out some records as well. The Monkees were duly assembled and released two albums, before rising up and seizing the means of production to record their own songs. This album is mostly harmless, but not particularly memorable. Highlight is a snarky song about the Beatles called “Randy Scouse Git”.

Romantic meal, candles lit, now for some music. Whatever you do, don’t put this album on. It starts with a song about a child custody battle and goes on to anger, jealousy, self pity and the unfairness of paying attorney fees. After a bitter divorce, Gaye was contractually obliged to produce an album and give his ex 50% - he delivered this, which takes petty revenge to a whole new level. Save this for if you get dumped and want to know how not to respond.

It never ceases to amaze me that an album released 50 years ago, recorded using instruments made from spare electronics and tin foil, held together with string and duct tape, still sounds fresh and startlingly modern. The highlight is the title track, recreating a trip on an Autobahn through the medium of motorik beats and painstakingly crafted sound effects. This is a genre defining album, influencing artists from Gary Numan to Afrika Bambaataa. Stunning

For a couple of hours this morning, I felt like I was in a 1960s Mad Men style Manhattan appartment, drinking a martini and listening to this box set on my Radiogram. Some of the best classic songs of the early to mid 20th century, sung by one of the very best vocalists, ranging from ragtime to jazz with a touch of soul thrown in. Apparently the original deluxe edition of this came in a wooden box for $100 (well over $1000 now). Totally worth it.

This album does exactly what it says on the tin. It starts with an ominous voiceover (“I have tasted maggots in the mind of the universe”) before setting off on a musical journey spanning acid rock, funk, soul, prog and even a bit of gospel in case y’all need churchin’ up. The highlights are the title track and the closing ‘Wars of Armageddon’ both clocking in around 10 minutes. Truly funkadelic!

This was supposedly the album that marked the transition from fay electro pop dweebs to stadium friendly behemoths, but it’s not quite there for me. There’s nothing that grabs me in quite the same way as Enjoy the Silence or Personal Jesus on their later album Violater. The best track is probably the opener “Never Let Me Down” but the rest of the album doesn’t quite live up to this.

This is a heartbreaking classic of an album. While Nothing Compares 2 U is the best known song, other tracks have an equal or greater impact with howls of despair and anger, as well as more upbeat and joyful numbers. The only misstep is ‘Black Boys on Mopeds’ which is a clunking protest song about Margaret Thatcher, but it was 1990 so we can probably let this one slide.

When I was a kid growing up in the 80s a new song (and video) from the ‘Nutty Boys’ was always a treat, but I’ve never listened to a whole album. On this, their fourth album, they find a different tone, delving into nostalgia for childhood and family life, and tackling darker topics like depression and the aftermath of the Falklands War. This was originally a concept album but it drifted slightly (and let’s not mention the misstep of New Delhi and the cover)

This is album that requires listening to on headphones - the extraordinary number of MFPH and the toe curlingly explicit references to sex, violence and drugs make this extremely NSFW. Headphones also show off the dense soundscapes of dialogue, jokes, samples, music and rap. You could almost see this as an elaborate satire of a gangsta whose idea of luxury is being able to afford both Sega and Nintendo at the same time, but Biggie was dead by 24. Sheesh.

This is the transitional album where Brian Eno came on board as a producer, turning Talking Heads from an arty NYC proto punk band into something that you could dance to. I haven’t listened to this album as much as some of the others - not because it’s not good, but because the live versions of some of these songs on Stop Making Sense (notably their cover of Al Green’s Take Me to the River) are even better than the ones here.

A self-aware, sample heavy NYC rock/rap trio, popular with white kids - it’s the Beastie Boys, right? NOT!!! It’s the Fun Lovin’ Criminals (with the all important apostrophe). I actually enjoyed this quite a bit more than I was expecting, particularly when they slowed things down a little and cut back on the samples. The highlight for me was a delicious cover of John Barry’s We Have All the Time in the World.

This was the album that came out after Brian Wilson had to give up touring for health reasons, but a year before Pet Sounds. It’s an ok collection of pop tunes with two bangers (Do You Wanna Dance and Help Me Ronda) but a lot of filler for an album that’s less than 30 minutes. The worst bit is the last track which is just two minutes of studio chatter. I initially thought this was a special feature, but it’s on the original release. Lazy, lazy Beach Boys.

I know this album off by heart and not through choice. When I was at university, the guy next door in the halls blew all his grant money on a cd player and only had enough left over to buy this, so he played it on repeat for weeks. I quite like Knopfler’s steel guitar on The Man’s Too Strong, but the rest of the album suffers from that overly bright 80s digital production, it’s way too long and the homophobic slurs in Money for Nothing can get in the bin.

How 80s could this album be? None. The answer is none more 80s. This is where Duran Duran changed from fay Sci Fi nerd New Romantics into archetypal shoulder padded yuppie icons, with an era defining series of music videos backed up with some great music. Admittedly, Simon LeBon wasn’t the world’s greatest vocalist, but the rest of the band held it together with the standout being John Taylor’s phenomenal bass lines punching through the mix. Yacht-tastic!

If you’d asked me to guess the year and genre of this album from the title, then acoustic folk punk from 1983 is probably the last thing I’d have gone for. This turns out to actually be a lot of fun, written by an 18 year old high school student called Gordon Gano, mixing punky Lou Reed style vocals with bouncy acoustic guitars and lively drums. The highlight is the first track Blister in the Sun which I recognised from the Xbox Rock Band soundtrack.

There comes a time in every band’s career when someone mentions the C word - the concept album. For a punk band known for three minute pop bangers this is a risky move. However the opening salvo of American Idiot still hits home, relevant today just by changing one word. The album looks American society at the turn of the millennium but not much has changed. Jesus of Suburbia sends shivers down my spine with the final ‘Are you leaving home?’. A punk classic.

The second album from 1983 this week and it’s a complete contrast. I remember enjoying this at the time but it hasn’t aged particularly well. It’s po-faced and preachy, and you get the feeling that no one involved had any fun at all while they were making it. I can’t imagine U2 busking outside a Pretenders gig and getting invited to be the support act for a night. Knocking off a star from the 1001 albums rating until they start paying their taxes.

Apparently Robert Smith had a bit of a crisis of confidence approaching his 30th birthday, thinking that he would soon be past his creative peak. He wrote most of the material for this album on his own, working through his feelings of despair and the band added musical gloomscapes to them. The end result is oddly uplifting, when you remember that Bob is now happily in his sixties and still collaborating with bands who are less than half his age. Gothtastic!

I only really knew the guitar/drums garage rock stuff from the White Stripes so this album was a bit of revelation with a wider range of instruments on offer, adding piano, marimba and mandolin to the mix. There are also some variations in style too, and I particularly enjoyed the country feel on Little Ghost and the blues rock of Instinct Blue. Nice to hear Meg singing too. True confession - I always thought they were siblings but turns out they’re married!

This is another album inspired by turning thirty, although with REM their songs tend to the wistful and abstruse rather than gloominess. The opening track Drive sets the tone for the album with sparse acoustic guitars blossoming into a stunning string arrangement from John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin. The remastered atmos mix also shines here, sounding intimate and epic at the same time. The highlight is still Stipe’s Elvis impression on Man in the Moon.

Apparently Peter Buck from REM once asked producer John Wood how he captured the intimate sound on this album. Wood replied that Nick Drake had simply sat in front of a single microphone and played his guitar. It really is a captivating performance that was sadly to be Drake’s last as he passed away at the age of 26. I can start to understand why Robert Smith and Michael Stipe were so worried about passing thirty now.

The extraordinary musicianship on this can’t be denied but it has to be tempered by knowing that Mingus was a angry man, prone to violent outbursts. He once punched a fellow musician in the face so hard it permanently damaged their ability to play the trombone. His anger is reflected in the music here - aggressive hard bop with diversions into blues and classical guitar. Apparently this was originally written as a ballet which is something that I want to see.

This live album opens with what sounds like a band tuning up at a sound check, then bit by bit they all start noodling around a theme, someone randomly starts singing and before you know it twenty minutes have passed. I always thought that the Grateful Dead were a rock band, but this is closer to free jazz with extended improvisations. I can see the attraction of following them around to listen to this while getting stoned in a field somewhere. Hippytastic!

Alternative bands from the 90s with one word names tend to blend into one for me and I initially struggled to remember anything from this one apart from Stupid Girl. However, I was pleasantly surprised by some of the more down tempo tracks on this that edged into shoegaze/trip hop territory, with the highlight for me being A Stroke of Luck with Shirley Manson’s voice flowing like warm honey. Lovely stuff.

After leaving Genesis, Peter Gabriel put out four quirky, experimental albums titled Peter Gabriel 1-4. His record company asked for a more marketable name for his fifth album, so he called it ‘So’. I wasn’t keen on this album at the time - a combination of the mawkish ‘Don’t Give Up’ and the MTV earworm of ‘Sledgehammer’ put me off. Revisiting it reveals some gems though, especially ‘This is the Picture’ with Laurie Anderson and opener ‘Red Rain’. Sotastic!

From the name, I was expecting a bit of country music, but instead got something that sounded like a cross between Coldplay and Ed Sheeran, from a man whose idea of a big romantic gesture is putting his phone on vibrate. This is so inoffensive you could play it at a dinner party for maiden aunts, nervous vicars and people with heart problems with no risk of upsetting anyone. The only edgy thing here is the cover where he is holding a longsword by the blade. Do not want.

I’m always intrigued when I get a band that I haven’t heard of on this project. This album starts out as fairly low key shoegazey indie before picking up with some nice 60s style psychedelia. Nothing world changing or revolutionary, but well done and good to listen to. The highlight for me is the Byrds-esque Memory Boy, dealing with the fallibility of nostalgia. A solid 3 stars for this.

This album was exactly what I needed this morning. Queer French hyper-pop, performed with Gallic elan by lead singer Chris. Unusually, this is a double album with the same songs presented in English and French, and on balance I think I preferred the French ones which gave my schoolboy French a workout. This would go down a storm on Eurovision and I mean that in the nicest way possible. It’s accessible, engaging and fun, and I will seek out more! Eurotastic!

Many of the best musicians in the world are to be found strumming away in dusty bars and concert halls, playing to a handful of local fans. In 1996 Ry Cooder went to Havana to record an album with some musicians from Mali, and for various reasons ending up recording an album of traditional Cuban music with a diverse group of local musicians instead. Everyone involved had a great time and the end result is an absolute joy to listen to. Soncubanotastic!

The conceit of MTV Unplugged is simple - get a big rock band to come in and play an acoustic set of their greatest hits. Nirvana approached the challenge differently, picking deep cuts and covers over hits, and featuring The Meat Puppets as special guests. Cobain sounds a little nervous at the start and also uses some amplification and effects in places. He passed away 5 months after this recording, lending it a poignant air, especially on Come As You Are.

Well, this was a lot of fun. Female fronted pop punk, with fuzzed out guitars and even more fuzzed out vocals, tracing a direct line from bands like the Pretenders and Siouxie and the Banshees. It’s not revolutionary or going to change the world in any way, but sometimes you just want something that hits all of the right notes without trying too hard. The highlight for me was the song No, No, No which is very appropriate for the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs.

Louis Prima is probably best known as the voice of King Louis in The Jungle Book, but this album from 1956 is equally joyous. The album was recorded as live in the studio with an excellent group of jazz musicians, who are clearly having a ball, as well as Prima’s wife Keely Smith who provides a cool counterbalance to his wild flights of fancy. It’s a brisk 30 minutes of fun and one of the rare albums where I listened twice. Highlight is opener Just a Gigolo!

Joan Armatrading has never quite reached the heights of superstardom, perhaps because she has always refused to play the tabloid fame game and kept her private life to herself. This album is a quiet gem, from one of Britain’s greatest singer songwriters, mixing songs of longing and regret with some gorgeously smooth jazzy R&B. There are some very pointed lyrics here too, especially Water with the Wine dealing with date rape.

This isn’t an easy listen, but it’s a worthy inclusion on the list. It opens with the mellow ‘Sunday Morning’ but rapidly moves onto stranger ground with songs about sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, layered on top of growling feedback and odd instrumentation. Vocals are split between Lou Reed’s proto punk drawl and Nico’s harmonies. Brian Eno once famously said that not many people bought this album when it was released but everyone that did started a band.

Mick Ronson and David Bowie were hugely influenced by The Velvet Underground and they repaid the favour by working on this album with Lou Reed. There’s definitely a glam feel to parts of this, but the lyrical content and Lou Reed’s distinctive style loses none of its edge. We still get boundary pushing tracks about trans people, sex of all flavours and a whole song about how nice it is to spend the day in the park off your head on heroin. Smacktastic!

The 1970s in Jamaica were a turbulent time. Just before he was due to play at a peace concert Bob Marley, his wife Rita, and his manager were shot at and wounded. This led to him moving to London and recording this album. Side one is the stronger, mixing the spiritual and political, with powerful songs. Side 2 is more chilled and has the better known tracks. This needs to be listened to on the biggest sound system you have with bass turned up. Splifftastic!

My uncle used to be a bit of an audiophile back in the day. He had a fancy turntable and big speakers, and when we went round, he’d put records on to show off how good it sounded. This was one of those records. Technically fine, but lacking anything that grabbed me in any way. This is typically overblown 70s pop prog and I couldn’t tell you what any of the songs were about. I did like the ‘bloody well right’ bit and I think ‘Dreamer’ must have been a single.

Like Bringing it all Back Home, this album is also full of complex, multi layered songs, backed with an electric band playing with gusto and sung by Bob in his trademark honking nasal drawl. Every time I listen to Desolation Row, I swear that someone has put extra verses in that I’ve never heard before, and they still feel relevant - the bit about the passengers on Titanic arguing about which side they’re on feels very on the nose today. Bobtastic!

Has there ever been a more thrilling start to an album than Highway Star on this one? It perfectly captures the feeling of driving like a maniac on an open road with some of the best guitar solo work on record. The album calms down a little after that with some nice bluesy rock before we hear *that* riff, familiar to anyone who’s ever been in a guitar shop, and probably the best song about someone burning down a casino. Funky Claudetastic!

When I was a kid, I used to borrow sound effects LPs from the library and record them on to cassettes to make mini audio dramas. This album is a little bit like that, except it also adds in a musical soundtrack for an imaginary film noir with the track names hinting at the unfolding drama. There are some nice nods to the genre with the Hitchcock tune and a stab at a Bond theme. I could imagine using this as a soundtrack for a seedy spy rpg. Cinetastic!

I think that every rock contract in the 70s must have had a clause that the band were obliged to record at least one live album in Japan. Thus we get Cheap Trick, in front of thousands of screaming Japanese fans, plodding through a competent but pedestrian set list. I always assumed that they were hard rock, but apart from the opening track this is closer to glam/pop. The highlight is a Chuck Berry cover where they somehow shoehorn in a drum solo.

There are some men of a certain age, probably wearing an old Ramones t shirt that’s a bit too small for them nowadays, who would look at this album and complain that it’s not ‘proper punk’. I would counter by saying that here we have 15 banging tunes in 38 minutes, dealing with boredom, alienation, growing up in an uncertain world that just doesn’t care, as well as the usual teenage concerns of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. What could be more punk than that?

This is an album that I’ve previously skipped on Bowie’s journey from Aladdin Sane to the Thin White Duke. It’s R&B/funk aimed with laser sharp cynical precision at the American market, and on reflection it’s pretty darned good and sounds better than the R&B that Bowie release in the 80s. The highlight is probably a spectacular cover of Across the Universe but the bitter and angry Fame written with John Lennon is good too, and also foreshadows 80s Bowie too

n 1959 Miles Davis decided to do something different, moving away from hard bop jazz. He assembled a crew of some of the best musicians around, gave them each a set of scales to improvise around, then lit the metaphorical blue touch paper. The result is like listening to a conversation as music is built up in real time with each player contributing to the piece. Music like this really should be heard live, but this recording is probably as good as it gets.

This an album of its time, and the time is firmly in the Summer of Love in San Francisco. Whilst the Beatles made a token effort to hide their drug references, Country Joe & the Fish are openly passing round the reefers and whispering LSD over the outro. They’re not shy about sex either and the politics are far to the left. The highlight is the cheeky Superbird where he calls on the Fantastic Four and Doctor Strange to take out LBJ. Hippytastic!

In one of those ironic twists that this list throws up, after yesterday’s album about how lovely drugs are, today’s is from someone who died after a heroin overdose. Janis Joplin had an amazing voice, but on this posthumously released album you can already hear it cracking in places and she sounds much older than her 27 years. The highlight is Mercedes Benz where her prayers gradually get scaled back from a new car to the next round of drinks. RIP Janis.

This sounded intriguing from the description - a debut album based on the artist’s synesthesia where he experienced first love as the colour orange. In actually, this is fairly anodyne R&B (albeit with some NSFW lyrics about running out of condoms) interspersed with random and surreal sound collages. The highlight (or very middling light) is where he pays a confused Muslim taxi driver to act as his personal therapist by keeping the meter running. Weird.

This album not only broke new ground in exploring the sounds that it was possible to get out of an electric guitar, it pushed the boundaries of rock music genre mashups with the highlight being the sci-fi epic Third Stone From the Sun which veers wildly from acid rock to free jazz noodling to total freak out. Legend has it that Jimi liked to play so loudly in the studio that the neighbours complained about the noise. Another artist who died far too young.

On October the first, 1966 Eric Clapton watched Jimi Hendrix playing at the London Polytechnic. Shortly after, he switched from ripping off black American blues guitarists to, well, you do the math. Disraeli Gears tries to be a psychedelic acid rock album, but it plods and meanders, and manages to seem tediously long for a running time of just over half an hour. Ginger Baker is still a good drummer but Clapton can get in the bin.

I only knew Van Halen from their 80s hair metal era, so this album was a pleasant surprise. There are interesting parallels between this and Iron Maiden’s first album, with both having a punk edge, but this album also includes blues and even some vocal scatting on one track. The highlight is probably the showboating guitar solo from Eddie Van Halen on Eruption that segues into a cheeky cover of The Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’. Good fun all round.

For a rap album, this is actually quite sweet and thoughtful. Lupe Fiasco had a tough upbringing, but the thing that he missed out on most was making model trains with his absent father. The cover shows him surrounded by his favourite things, including a Nintendo DS. He tackles the thorny subject of misogyny in rap on one track and spends the outro thanking everyone by name who helped him. The highlight is a two part song about skateboarding. Nerdtastic!

This is another one of those albums that struck a chord with the listening public as being something to put on if you were planning a cozy night in with your significant other. I’m not entirely sure quite how romantic the line about wanting to be turned on like a light bulb in a darkened room is though! It’s a nice easy listen though - a bit of piano, some folky guitar and smooth vocals from Norah herself. Not my usual cup of tea, but a solid 3 stars though.

This is an album that I’ve skipped over previously going from Talking Book to Songs in the Key of Life, but it really is a quiet masterpiece with many standout moments. Living for the City hits hard with a story of a naive young black man moving to New York and ending up on the wrong side of the law, complete with dialogue and sound effects. There are brighter songs too, with Don’t You Worry Bout a Thing being an absolute joy from start to finish.

Sometimes you just want an album of good old fashioned swampy blues and southern fried rock ‘n’ roll to stomp along to. Creedence Clearwater Revival might not be the world’s greatest band, but they really sound like they’re enjoying themselves on this and it’s infectious. Does this earn them a place in this list? Yes, if only for their audacious eleven minute cover version of ‘Heard it through the Grapevine’ which is a whole lot of fun. Bayoutastic!

This album opens with a huge bombastic blast with arpeggiated synths, huge guitar riffs and crashing drums, like Queen crossed with Phillip Glass. It calms down a little after that with Starlight sounding a bit like Coldplay, although Supermassive Black Hole returns to the big 70s glam rock feel. The standout for me is Knights of Cydonia which adds galloping horses and Dick Dale style surf guitar to the mix. Excellent fun all round. Sagittarius A*-tastic!

Even though I know this is a crowd funded concept album about the experience of living in the Deep South, it still confuses the heck out of me when they start singing about living in Birmingham. Anyhoo, this takes as its starting point the tragic story of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the plane crash in 1977 that killed half the band, as well as the pilots. It’s a wildly ambitious project, but they just about pull it off, tackling some touchy subjects. Bostintastic!

I wasn’t expecting today’s selection to be an Afrofuturist concept album inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, but it turns out that it was exactly what I needed this morning. It’s gloriously textured and complex and I’m already listening for the second time. I’m also a sucker for any album that has an orchestral overture! My highlight is the psychedelic Mushrooms & Roses which explores the unexpected subject of robot sex. Droidtastic!

I was a bit too young for punk back in the day but new wave hit me right in my adolescent wheelhouse. This album combines the exuberance of 50's rock 'n' rollers like the Crickets with the punk energy of The Stooges, as well as a touch of French nouvelle vague cool. Just about every song on this is a banger, but apart from the hits (and there are a lot of them!) the standout is the cheeky cover of Buddy Holly's I'm Gonna Love You Too. Peroxide-tastic!

Live albums are tricky to get right - there needs to be the right balance between the music and the between songs banter with the crowd. Fortunately this album hits all the right notes with a great atmosphere and phenomenal musicianship from the king of the blues himself. This still feels fresh, despite being recorded 60 years ago (and harking back to even earlier songs called out as “Real, real oldies!”). Not sure about his relationship advice though!

This is a change of mood from the previous album, swapping some cheeky love songs for the introspection of In the Wee Small Hours. There’s a good selection of classic tunes, with I’ve Got You Under My Skin by Cole Porter being a highlight. I also found out today that there were two versions of the cover art - the original with Frank looking off into the distance was changed for one where he’s watching the ‘Swingin’ Lovers’ like a slightly creepy uncle!

After their previous album which was mainly Bob Dylan style American folk, and a devastating tour bus crash, Fairport Convention regrouped and produced this album which mixes traditional English folk tunes with (gasp!) electric guitars to great effect. The highlights are Matty Groves which is an epic tale of adultery, murder and revenge that builds for eight minutes, and Tam Lin which has all of the faeries, magic and big rock riffs that you could wish for

Weirdly the original release of this album omitted both the title track and their biggest hit, but this version has those plus a couple of other b sides. Anyhoo, with this we are very much in the post punk era with a side line in obtuse lyrics. I struggled to hear what he was singing in places - for years I’d assumed that he was asking his mum to accept his reward. This is probably the best band to be named after a random quote from a Silver Surfer comic.

This is one of those albums where I can clearly remember seeing the cover for the first time - that multicoloured flying saucer with a space ship about to dock promised great things and the album really delivered - mixing electric guitars with orchestral arrangements, some effective sound effects and twiddles, and impossibly catchy songs. The highlight is side 3 which is a sequence ending with the iconic Mr Blue Sky and the instruction ‘Please turn me over’

This was another band that passed me by in the early 2000s for some reason. Initial impressions were that this was by the numbers indie rock with a heavy Coldplay influence, but as it went on it grew more irritating. They threw what sounded like a choir of children into the mix but it was the singer’s voice that had a wheedling ‘please feel some emotions’ vibe to it. Anyhoo, turns out he’s a massive online sex pest, so this album can get in the bin.

Steve Winwood is an insanely talented musician. He was in three influential bands in the 60s and has worked with just about everyone in the music biz. However, this solo album (he played everything on this) falls flat for me. It’s amiable jazz-funk, but it suffers from weedy 80s home studio production and lacks a bit of oomph. The highlight is an unlikely collaboration with Viv Stanshall (of Bonzo Dog fame) who provided lyrics for the title track.

There’s no better illustration of Dolly Parton’s talent as a songwriter than the opening two tracks on this album. Coat of Many Colors is a heartbreaking story of growing up poor with a mama’s love. In contrast, the next one is Dolly at her sassy best with a cheeky tale of stepping out with a Travelling Man, with a killer twist. There are also songs of awful spousal abuse, spirituality and the simple joy of a flower meadow on a sunny morning. A pure gem!

I’d always assumed that ‘Theme from Shaft’ was a one off novelty record, but it turns out that Isaac Hayes (who missed out on the title role) recorded the whole soundtrack for the film. The result is a double album of prime 70s funk and soul. Judged on its own merits, most of these tracks lack context so feel a bit aimless. The highlight though is ‘Do Your Thing’ - an epic 20 minute track which makes me feel like driving a car through some cardboard boxes.