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Think of 20 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life--music that affected you. Then when you finish, tag 20 others (or more), including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part. 1. Tapestry, Carole King. I grew up on this album. It was one of my mother's favorites to sing to, and I know every word of it. The song "Tapestry" still gets to me, and "You've Got a Friend" is a gorgeous song. It's crunchy and 70s in that rare good way. 2. Black Celebration, Depeche Mode. Oh, the bitter bitter hate. This is my official album of St. Johns, adolescence, and the certainty that nothing has ever sucked so raw as what the Drama Queen self currently experiences. Still love it, too. "Black Celebration" and "Fly on the Windscreen" will always do it for me. Also, "A Question of Lust" rules; the whole album is great scene music. 3. Pretty Hate Machine, Nine Inch Nails. What person my age doesn't love Trent Reznor? "Sin" still makes me want to dance, and "Down In It" makes so much more sense now that I'm in my resigned 30s. This is an all-the-way-through listen, and it continues to be an angry that feels just like home. 4. Purple Rain, Prince & The Revolution. So, it's the mid-80s, and I'm living in NorCal. Everything about home life basically sucks--Dad's drunk, Mom's on meth, beatings are fairly regular...it's not the best. But, you know what was? Listening to this cassette, in Nanny's basement, with Lena, Melissa, and Frankie, and just being kids. Of course, we didn't get most of what was going on in the music, and so now it's got a lot more--and dirtier--layers. But, the love endures. 5. The Gambler, Kenny Rogers. Okay, I usually am not a fan of the country, and the late seventies and early eighties were a particularly big-haired, shiny-suited, twangy-voiced period of C&W music. And, yet. I know every second of this album. It's fun, it's occasionally and quite embarassingly "funky," and it features the heyday of Kenny, whom I used to fantasize was my real dad. The song "King of Oak Street" still, and will always, remind me of the life lesson that my dad was, despite his god-like status in my child's mind, just an ordinary man. 6. eponymous debut, Melissa Etheridge. I would argue that Brave & Crazy is a better album, musically, but this is the one that changed me. It came into my life a few years after it had hit, and at a perfect moment to wrestle with some ambiguous feelings in high school...and I think I'll leave it there. But, "Similar Features" and "Bring Me Some Water" are still completely searing songs that deserve to be all but screamed, they have such energy and angst. 7. White Trash Beautiful, Everlast. While I have affection for all of his solo work, this album came along during a particularly difficult period, and I listened to the song "Pain" near-continually for about three months. The title song is an excellent retread of some old C&W territory, but in a much updated style, and the album works together very well; I have great love for it, though it now makes me sad to hear it. 8. Hybrid Theory, Linkin Park. Did this album change me? No. What it did was give voice to exactly what I couldn't: how much everything I'd spent my whole life working toward had ceased to matter. The song "In the End" will always remind me of grad school, and the so many ways in which things fall apart. Also, at their concert in 2003 was the first time I ever felt old, when some 15 year old told me she thought it was really great that older people like me could appreciate their music. Older People? I was 28, but felt about 1000. 9.Wild!, Erasure. It's such fun, unapologetic pop music, and it reminds me of Candace at her most fun and funny, and of that fleeting feeling of the possibility for escape that would come upon me every once in a while during my teen years. Also, I must never get angry at the stupid people, though I go crazy at the dullness of my life. 10. Synchronicity, The Police. It was the first music I ever bought for myself (cassette, yes), and the only music I owned for about two years. I've heard it so many times it probably plays in my sub-conscious all the time. "Walking in your Footsteps" and "Wrapped Around Your Finger" hold up every bit as well as the better known tracks, twoo. 11. Gordon, Barenaked Ladies. This somehow escaped my mind the first time, and it's funny like that, in that it's so much a part of my life that it doesn't even stand out in my memory as a record so much as just the music that's always there. It makes it all the way from the sublimely ridiculous ("If I Had a Million Dollars" or "Enid") to the quiet poetic and even touching ("What a Good Boy" and "The Flag"). Besides, it's forever tied to Aaron and his supremely offbeat sensibilities for music. 12. A Wild and Crazy Guy, Steve Martin. This was the first comedy album I ever heard, and my parents had it on vinyl, so I heard it a lot, especially during really lean times and in St. Johns, where there was little to do other than read and lay low in the bunker. I still recite the non-conformist's oath to myself on occasion in celebration of the consummate stupid irony that is willful subcultural construction. 13. Class Clown, George Carlin. Before he became the angry (but still, always, funny) guy I remember best, he was such a goofy counter-cultural dude. And this record's just funny. Besides, it takes the piss out of religion so well, and I'm always a fan of that. 14. Live at San Quentin, B.B. King. There are probably a dozen BB albums that I could put on here, but this is the one I grew up on, and so the one that goes all the way through me. I could listen to these recordings of "The Thrill is Gone" and "Rock Me, Baby" once an hour on the hour for the rest of my life, I think. 15. The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem. Yes, it's virulently offensive to women, gays, various of his family members, suburban parents, and a whole host of other people, many of whom I share at least some allegiance with. It's also a brilliant album, a crystalline encapsulation of impotent class rage and futile industrial-era codes of masculinity in a world moved on, as well as a lot of damn fun to listen--and rage--to. Besides, I had been listening to hip-hop and rap for over a decade, and it took that long for a white kid to make the crossover really happen, so I have to love it. As a white kid who grew up loving a style of music that didn't much want me as a listener, Em made me happy from the moment "Guilty Conscience" broke on Slim Shady. This was just the one that made it real. 16. New Miserable Experience, Gin Blossoms. An Arizona band had a huge hit record (which managed, against both odds and musical style) to ride the grunge wave during the year I graduated high school. In Arizona. I've got this record inscribed on my DNA, I have listened to it so many times. I think I'm on my third copy. 17. No Rest for the Wicked, Ozzy Osbourne. My sister went through about a ten year obsession with Ozzy, so I've heard most of his stuff a great deal...this is the one that stuck. So, in the same way that Mel will probably always associate Depeche Mode 101 with me, this is forever attached to my memory of her as a kid and adolescent. Also, "Demon Alcohol" is totally on the mark, and "Crazy Babies" is just a damn lot of fun. 18. True Blue, Madonna. I like Madonna. Actually, she's grown on me a great deal, and I quite love the woman. But, this is not her best album. However, it's the one that made the biggest impression on me. I'd already gotten used to her because Like a Virgin had been so big, but I was in maybe 6th or 7th grade and just starting to notice the larger world and how stupid it is at the same time this record hit, so I was really marked by the flap over the "Papa Don't Preach" and "Open Your Heart" videos. At the time, I didn't get it, but it lingers for me as the time she proved how easily manipulated we the public are, how bipolar on the subject of sex--and how easy and profitable controversy is to generate. 19. Norman Rockwell is Bleeding, Christopher Titus. It's fall-down funny, and for once I get to feel like other people have families as jacked up as mine. His stories of trying to be the adult, and the kid, in a family where you have to be grateful for the addict raising you because the other parent's a lot worse speaks directly to me. I can laugh until I cry listening to this one. 20. Crossroads, Tracy Chapman. One of the most spiritually searching recordings I have ever owned. Seriously. I have listened to "Bridges" and "All that You Have is Your Soul" dozens of times while fighting the war inside for my soul. And "Born to Fight" still gets me fired up when necessary. Post a comment in response: |
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