My wife began this challenge on Facebook. Each day post an image of an album cover of music that shaped your taste in music... The rules states that you should say why, just post the image (and the rules) and tag someone new each day. (My wife as a good Facebook-citizen of course denied to do that last part)
But her challenge got me thinking. Ten albums? I don't think I could keep it to ten albums per genre I like. So i decided to make a great big list of lists.
Rock Music
As a genre rock may be one of the broadest, but a lot of releases in this genre has shaped my tastes. It is also the first genre I really listened to - that moved me - so it had to come first.
Backman Turner Overdrive - "Not Fragile"
The first times I heard the first track on this album - it meant "Daddy is angry - and probably drunk!". I hated that song for years. But at some point - as a pre-teen - I began listening to it myself. And especially the first two songs on the album was what I thought as Hard Rock for years. (I got into a fight with classmates whether or not it was as good as Metallica).
Eric Clapton - "Journeyman"
When I began playing guitar, Clapton was god to me. My parents recorded his Royal Albert Hall concert from the Journeyman tour on VHS for me ; and I have watched that tape soo many times. I really liked the newer songs from the new albums from that concert - many of them are still among my favorite songs. Not long after, though, my focus shifted toward other rock acts.
Guns n Roses - "Use Your Illusion II"
This is the first cd I ever bought. (I bought Metallicas Black Album the same day). I had heard a lot of gnr before that - but I heard this album (and the black album) on repeat for weeks and weeks.
Guns n Roses - "Appetite for Destruction"
I don't really know when I got this album (it was after "Use your Illusion"). But I love the songs on this album much more today - I honestly only think that "Civil War" and "Pretty Tied Up" gets any airplay at home these days - but I can listen to all of Appetite without pause...
Metal
Metallica - "Metallica"
The Black Album was the first metal album I bought. (See above). I listened to it daily for weeks (maybe even months). I still love each and every song on it... Sadly I hate everything after this release (maybe I am biased by being into metal for years, and we all just cargo-culted the "Metallica sold out" - I don't know...)
Pantera - "Far Beyond Driven"
On a soccer camp one year, I borrowed a walkman with this tape in it, because I couldn't sleep... I wore out his battery - because I listened to it all night... I bought it as soon as I got home. I love that album. To this day! I can listen to it multiple times back to back, and still not get tired of it... And when listening to their cover of "Planet Caravan" my mind wanders back to lying on in a classroom in some school far away from home.. I can remember everything about that trip from that one song... Powerful stuff...
Sepultura - "Chaos A.D."
I bought this album the same day as I bought the Pantera album. I don't remember if I had heard about them before or not (I probably had). I actually think I quite quickly got tired of them - but they were so popular - so I guess I just pretended to like them...
Our first band actually was called Sepulcultura when we started it. Named after - of course - Sepultura, and a danish yoghurt called Cultura... It was very bad naming.
Machine Head - "Burn My Eyes"
I fucking love "Davidian" from this album. I bought the album on a whim (I guess the cover looked cool?) It was my last thrash/groove metal album - once everybody began listening to the band, I hated it. (You know, I was a hipster before hipsters were a thing!)
Deicide "Once Upon the Cross" & Morbid Angel "Domination"
I don't know which of these was most important to me at the time. (I know that I have listened more to the Morbid Angel album in recent years). I bought both albums in a record store in Prague in 9th grade. I found the guitar sound on the Morbid Angel album very weird, and the Deicide album just sounded brutal as fuck...! (And the overt anti-christian lyrics and imagery was very appealing to a young angry self-proclaimed satanist - of course!)
Edge of Sanity - "Purgatory Afterglow"
I borrowed a tape from my good friend Lars with this album on it... I am pretty sure he never got the tape back. The song writing on the album was refreshing to me, and I loved the lyrics.
In Flames - "Lunar Strain"
Guess what was on the other side of that tape? Yes! The first album by In Flames. It shaped much of my own music writing for the first couple of years.
Dissection - "Storm of the Lights Bane"
To this day one of my favorite albums. I will never grow tired of this album! I heard an earlier version of "Nights Blood" on a compilation a couple of months before the album was released - and I decided to learn it. (And I must admit - I have written many riffs that either sounded like Dissection without me trying - or that I tried to make sound like Dissection, and failed)
I love all of the eight tracks (yes, the intro and outro are awesome in my ears as well!)
I cannot even tell you my favorite track on the album - it has changed a lot. It started being Nights Blood - since I heard that one first. Then it was the hit "Where the Dead Angels Lie" - like everybody else! Later it was Soulreaper... Now I just love the whole album...! Come to think of it ... let's listen to it now!
Emperor - "In the Nightside Eclipse"
The only black metal I really liked when it was released - in those years. (Unless you call Cradle and/or Dissection black metal, that is). Everything else was just noise to me at first. (Within a couple of years I loved all of it - exposure seems to change your tastes)
I can still get lost in the worlds this music builds in my mind. The album is the only Emperor album that is best as a whole - meaning I need to listen to the whole album from start to finish... The other albums have good songs, and less good songs... I don't know the song titles from each other on the eclipse-album... It is all one song to me!
Cradle of Filth - "The Principles of Evil Made Flesh", "Dusk... and Her Embrace" & "Cruelty and the Beast"
I listened to "To Eve The Art Of Witchcraft" on a compilation album I borrowed from a friend. I fell absolutely in love with the song - and needed to borrow the complete album - which I also fell in love with! I have listened to every Cradle release since then - as soon as I could get a hand on them (in later years, Spotify has helped with that). The first three especially was very important to me. A lot of good memories have been embedded into that music as well... (The first time I slept - in a bed anyways - with my now wife "Cruelty" was playing on repeat ... so the sentence "Hear me now, all crime should be treasured if they bring you pleasure somehow" - has been our mantra ever since)
HipHop
Eminem - "The Marshall Mathers L.P."
I quit my band just before going of to highschool (Højskole in danish - it is not the same as an American highschool). And I had a period of my life where I was trying to put a distance to metal music. I needed something new in my life. I had been listening to hiphop for years. I love great lyrics, and to this day I still love the wordplays of good rap-music.
This album was on repeat on our school - a couple of us listened to it daily (I am pretty sure a lot of people on the school hated us for listening to it all the time - but they had shitty taste)
Dr Dre - "2001"
Party music for me when I got home from that school..!
L.O.C. - "Dominologi" & U$O - "Mr Mista"
A couple of friends of mine and I started a company (web-development agency) and these two albums were our work-playlist for a while. (Ok, maybe only for the two of us)
To this day I know every sentence to all songs on both albums by heart...!
Tudsegammelt - "Tudsegammelt"
My wife and I was out on the town one night - in our old home-town Ribe - and this band was playing. Some of my old friends/acquaintances were in the band - so I just had to see them... AND I FELL IN LOVE!
I listen to their debut album (which was released 6 months later or so) all the time. The day my daughter was born, we listened to the album on our way to the hospital. I still listen to it weekly.
The band has also been a gateway drug to underground danish rap... And there are a lot of great lyrical mc's out there...!
Madvillain (M.F. Doom) - "Madvillainy"
Your favorite rappers favorite rapper? I fell over his name when I saw a video of Mos Def praising the album on youtube... I was hooked when Mos Def quoted some of his favorite lines... When I heard the album I think I heard it on repeat for a week.