15 Albums

I've just been tagged in this meme on Facebook. So thought I'd say my results here with a few notes.

THE RULES: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen albums you've heard that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me, because I'm interested in seeing what albums my "music-fan-friends" choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste the rules in a new note, cast your fifteen picks, and tag people in the note).

1. U2 - War

This was the first U2 Album I listened to all the way through and it was what really hooked me to their sound.

2. Duran Duran - Rio

IMHO the best Album by my favourite band as a teenager. Didn't get to see them live until the Notorious tour but they had me at the intro the the title track here.

3. Mika - Live in Cartoon Motion

With 'Grace Kelly' snaring me in I was hooked. He has an incredible and unique vocal sound that gets across some difficult subject matter listen to 'Billy Brown' to see what I mean.

4. Prince - Purple Rain

My introduction to the diminuative Minnesotean really took me to a whole new plane. The guitar rift into drums at the start of 'When Doves Cry' the electro-pop elsewhere. Wow, just wow.

5. Michael Jackson - Thriller

The seminal album of everyone of my generation Eight top ten singles off the one album I mean come on. And then the whole 'Thriller' single, even on vinyl it captures your imagination but not as it did on celluloid.

6. The Divine Comedy - Fin de Siècle

Although this album does contain 'National Express' it is one of Neil Hannon's more sombre collections. But as every it is his use of words that really thrills.

7. Crowded House - Temple of the Low Men

With 'Better Be Home Soon', crowd favourite 'Sister Madly' and 'Into Temptation' maybe not everyone's favourite album but a journey one for me.

8. Bruce Hornsby and the Range - The Way is Is

That piano playing. Enough said.

9. Deacon Blue - Raintown

Come on don't tell me you can't see that council worker with his Sunblest bag wrapped lunch saving for his dream boat to sail up the west coast. Just from me naming the album. I've sung this song at full belt numerous times while sailing up the west coast, just never owned the yacht...yet.

10. Aztec Camera - Love

So many memories tied up with a number of these songs, but 'Summer in the City' and 'How Men Are' are enough for you to be guessing what memories.

11. Billy Joel - The Stranger

Actually contains the most wonderfully constructed Billy Joel song ever 'Scenes from an Italian Restaurant'. A mini opera in three Acts. I have a live lecture CD in which he explains the process. Add on 'Just the Way You Are', 'Only the Good Die Young', 'Moving Out (Anthony's Song)' and 'She's Always a Woman' and tell me he gets better than this.

12. The Beatles - Revolver

Had to include one Beatle's album and why not include a double. By far a pivotal album in the Beatles cannon a shift from purely pop to experimentation.

13. INXS - The Swing

To show that I knew of them pre-Live Aid (which was during the 'Listen Like Thieves' next album) here is the album I finally got a hold of after an Australian penfriend (no Facebook those days) told me they were great. 'Johnson's Aeroplane' and the 'Original Sin' are two key songs for me.

14. Scissor Sisters - Scissor Sisters

Jake Shears, Ana Matronic, Baby Daddy, Del Marquis and Paddy Boom fairly exploded unto the scene with this album. Like many of the songs on here it is the lyrical mastery as much as the musically that gets me. The more you listen the more you pick up.

15. Coldplay - Parachutes

Just a different change of pace from much of what is above. But a seminal album that everyone eventually got into to help chill.

Of course now that I have made this list and posted it there is one album I'm going how could I forget without even delving further, Paul Simon's - Graceland my copy was the one that went around school and got taped by all my friends. In one room one night we played the whole thing three times, just so the other three could tape it. The African vibes from this album of the then still opressed South African blacks was a bold political statement but one that was brilliant musically.