Okay, so I got tagged for this game on my Face­book page. But it was such a good meme that I had to share it here as well …

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Being the music lover that I am, I have to say that this meme took me about a week to com­plete. Because seri­ously peo­ple … it’s really hard for me to come up with just 15 influ­en­tial albums. Hence the rea­son for the “Hon­or­able Men­tions” listed below.

Now, before I start … I must pref­ace this by explain­ing the year listed in paren­the­sis after the album. Even though the dates next to it reflect the year the album was released, I might not have heard it until later in life. HOWEVER, the *actual* order in which they are listed is when that par­tic­u­lar album became part of my life.

And look­ing back at it now, I can’t believe how much these albums have influ­enced every aspect of my life. Here goes …

RULES: Think of 15 albums, CDs, LPs (if you’re over 40) that had such a pro­found effect on you they changed your life … Dug into your soul. Music that com­pletely brought you to life when­ever you heard it … Roy­ally affected you, kicked you in the wazoo … lit­er­ally socked you in the gut.

List those albums below and when you’re fin­ish, tag 15 oth­ers, includ­ing me. Then make sure you copy and paste this part so they also know the drill.

So … let’s begin.

  1. Revolver (1966)- The Bea­t­les
    I have always cred­ited my par­ents for intro­duc­ing me to my love of music. This Bea­t­les album, in par­tic­u­lar, is the one I remem­ber the most from my child­hood. Specif­i­cally, I remem­ber singing along to an 8-​​track copy of those songs on a 1977 trip down to Dis­ney World. To this day, I can’t help but smile every time I hear “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine.“
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  2. Bad Girls (1979) — Donna Sum­mer
    It wasn’t until lis­ten­ing to “Machine Soul: An Odyssey into Elec­tronic Dance Music” (2000) that I remem­bered how much Donna Sum­mer influ­enced my taste in Elec­tronic music. This is one of those albums that I have a dis­tinct mem­ory of being drawn into the beats and bass of each song with­out any influ­ence from any­body (read: older brother) or any­thing (radio sta­tions) else. In fact, ask my aunt or my mom … they will tell you how I refused to let them leave some depart­ment store (can’t remem­ber which) just because I wanted to hear the rest of the album. I was 8 years old at the time. (Side note: If you lis­ten to M.I.A.‘s lat­est album “Kala” you can clearly hear the influ­ence this 1979 album has on music today.)
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  3. Back in Black (1980) — AC/DC
    What can I say? I was brought up amongst the “head-​​bangers” of Madi­son Heights and War­ren. Seri­ously, many of my neigh­bor­hood friend’s were con­stantly intro­duc­ing hard rock into our sphere of musi­cal tastes (which is why there’s still some­thing about Def Lep­pard that gets me going). But THIS album … Total. Rock Out. Music. Noth­ing gets you off your a$$ like lis­ten­ing to the first gui­tar riffs of “Back in Black.“
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  4. Pur­ple Rain (1984) — Prince
    The movie, the songs … this album threw me com­pletely out of my MJ “Thriller” phase into truly mag­nif­i­cent song writ­ing; amaz­ing arrange­ments and incred­i­bly un-​​PG rated lyrics for a 12-​​year old Catholic school girl.
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  5. Duran Duran (1981) — Duran Duran
    Here’s the start of my obses­sion with New Wave. And I’m not talk­ing about the over­played (but def­i­nitely well-​​manufactured) “Rio” album. Their first stu­dio album is filled with incred­i­ble bass lines and (of course) synth rock. Every­thing from Planet Earth to the instru­men­tal “Tel Aviv” screams frilly “New Roman­tic” shirts and heavy 80’s eye make-​​up.
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  6. Some Great Reward (1984) — Depeche Mode
    Why this album over the incred­i­bly influ­en­tial “Black Cel­e­bra­tion”? Mainly because I remem­ber the day that my older brother brought that cas­sette tape home and played it on our “Minus-​​One” karaōke machine. It’s like I finally under­stood what it was that I truly loved about heavy drum and bass beats and deep dark vocals/​lyrics … Not to men­tion all those synth-​​based indus­trial clips was some­thing I had never ever heard before in any other songs with such catchy beats.
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  7. Stand­ing at the Beach (1986) — The Cure
    Even though my first taste of The Cure was with their album “The Head on the Door,” this cumu­la­tive album of their works up to this period got me caught up with all Robert Smith’s works. Who, of course, ulti­mately wrote prob­a­bly the pin­na­cle song of my exis­tence, “Pic­ture of You.“
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  8. The Queen is Dead (1986) — The Smiths
    What can I say? This album is every­thing a 14-​​year old full of hor­monal angst needed to sur­vive dur­ing those incred­i­ble times of self-​​loathing and lone­li­ness.
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  9. Kick — INXS (1987)
    I know, right? Why this INXS album, their most over­played, com­mer­cially suc­cess­ful album? Why not “Sha­booh Shoobah” (which I first heard back in 1983) or “Lis­ten Like Thieves,” which really got me into the band? The sim­ple answer is this: It’s an incred­i­bly well-​​written album; one which merges the two absolute best parts of their music … the R&B of “Sha­booh” and the Rock & Roll of “Thieves” …
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  10. Com­puter World (1981) — Kraftwerk
    Okay, so I don’t actu­ally remem­ber exactly when I started lis­ten­ing to Kraftwerk. I do remem­ber hear­ing “Tour de France” on the “Breakin’” movie sound­track and com­pletely being enthralled with it. I prob­a­bly stum­bled onto this album in 1987 or 1988 when see­ing the video for “Pocket Cal­cu­la­tor” dur­ing MTV’s 120 Min­utes and man­aged to get a “Max­ell 90-​​minute cas­sette tape” copy of it. I sup­pose you can say that this album, along with “Tour de France” was my first foray into Techno and ulti­mately Detroit Techno.
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  11. Sub­stance (1987) — New Order
    Again, here’s another cumu­la­tive works album of a band that I first heard with their “Broth­er­hood” album. Sub­stance, how­ever, dif­fered in the fact that they pro­vided the penul­ti­mate remixes of their most well-​​known hits. (Although, I still main­tain that I love “Brotherhood’s” ver­sion of “Blue Mon­day” bet­ter.) It def­i­nitely beat try­ing to find those 12-​​inch remixes at the orig­i­nal “Off The Record” or “Sam’s Jams” back in the day.
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  12. Nev­er­mind (1991)- Nir­vana
    I admit it. This album made the list purely because it brings me back to those col­lege years and the whole Alt Rock scene … even though I credit The Pix­ies “Surfer Rosa” as prob­a­bly the album that brought true Alter­na­tive Rock (none of this post-​​Nirvana fan-​​dangled alterna-​​rock sh*t) to the fore­front for me. There’s just some­thing about “Smells Like Teen Spirit” that brings me back to the days of work­ing at OU’s col­lege radio sta­tion and many beer-​​laden nights.
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  13. Ampli­fied Heart (1994) — Everything But The Girl
    I was first intro­duced to EBTG with the sound­track to the John Hughes movie, “She’s Hav­ing A Baby.” Yes “Apron Strings” is the song of which my blog is based on. How­ever, this album for me is where Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt begin to tran­si­tion over from their Euro-R&B sound to Elec­tron­ica; both sounds of which I absolutely adore.
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  14. No Strings Attached (2000) — N’Sync
    Yes, I know. Why would the “Class New Waver” like some­thing so main­stream? Actu­ally it’s more about the fact that here’s an album that I truly wanted to buy after almost a half a decade of not lis­ten­ing to or even buy­ing music. The years between the last album on my list and this one were spent focus­ing on mar­ried life and my career. This album is the one I credit for get­ting me back into music again. Coin­ci­den­tally, did you know that this is the high­est sell­ing album of all times, sell­ing 2.4 mil­lion the first week it was released? Shortly after (in 2001), iTunes and the iPod came into exis­tence; bring­ing dig­i­tal down­loads and sales into the fore­front of the way peo­ple bought and lis­tened to music.
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  15. Ele­phant (2003) — White Stripes
    Here’s another one of those albums that got me back into really lis­ten­ing to music. Specif­i­cally music of the Rock genre. There’s some­thing incred­i­bly sim­ple, yet com­pli­cated, about the music of Jack and Meg that had me enthralled with their musi­cal arrangements.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

  • The Hurt­ing (1983) –Tears For Fears
    Goth meets New Wave. Even at 13 yrs old, I was already into the deep and dark “Mad World” of haunt­ing lyri­cism.
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  • Twitch (1986) — Ministry
    My first taste of Indus­trial music. “Over The Shoul­der” is one of those cult “City Club” clas­sics (along with “Every­day is Hal­loween”) that you just can’t live with­out.
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  • Sub­stance (1988) — Joy Divi­sion
    After get­ting into New Order’s Sub­stance album, I had to go back and know the his­tory behind the band. Of course, that brought me to Joy Divi­sion and “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” Com­pletely kicked “Bauhaus” off the top of my favorite “Goth” bands. Seri­ously. Noth­ing like lis­ten­ing to Ian Cur­tis lyrics to make you wanna curl up in a ball and dis­ap­pear.
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  • Surfer Rosa (1988) — The Pix­ies
    Rather than explain again, see #12 above.
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  • Pretty Hate Machine (1989) — Nine Inch Nails
    Noth­ing … and I repeat noth­ing can beat any other NIN album since. I don’t care how incred­i­bly rev­o­lu­tion­ary or suc­cess­ful any of Trent’s later albums were. I still con­sider this one of my favorite Indus­trial albums of all times.
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  • Speakerboxxx/​The Love Below (2003) — Outkast
    Don’t get me wrong, I like Hip Hop, but I’m not in love with it. This album though … totally every­thing I ever wanted in a Hip Hop album.
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  • Aru­lar (2005) — M.I.A.
    Another one of those mid-2000’s that really stands out in the over­sat­u­rated mar­ket of Hip Hop. Plus she’s Asian. And she just rocks!
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  • Appetite for Destruc­tion (1987) — Guns ‘N Roses
    Notice how chrono­log­i­cally this album is last on my list? Mean­ing I truly did not appre­ci­ate this album for what it is until recently. I’ve always had a thing for break­ing down music to it’s most basic form; lis­ten­ing to each instru­ment indi­vid­u­ally and then see­ing how it’s arranged in the over­all com­po­si­tion of a song or entire album. While I absolutely hated this album in high school when it first came out, I am com­pletely floored by it today. Axl may be totally crazy … but seri­ously, this album is in-f*ckin-credible.

So that’s my list. Nowhere all com­pre­hen­sive of all the dif­fer­ent types of music I enjoy. This totally skips over my love of Elec­tron­ica music; specif­i­cally deep house and home-​​grown Detroit Techno. And my love for com­pi­la­tion albums such as sound­tracks and trib­ute albums. But hey … I fig­ured it already took me a week to come up with this list. And it’s as good as it’ll ever be.

Okay, now it’s you’re turn. Not that you have to do this, but I’m gonna tag you just because I’m curi­ous to see what your choices would be. SO … if you so choose to accept this mis­sion, will the fol­low­ing peo­ple list their top 15 albums?

Kara, Kate, Io, Shine­jil, Pam, Christina, and Barb

If you can’t come up with fif­teen … at least com­ment below with the one album that has affected you the most. And this includes any­one else that wishes to play along …