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Ratt ‘Invasion of Your Privacy’ (1985)
When Los Angeles glam metal was having its moment in the early-80’s, there were two bands that defined the genre– Mötley Crüe and Ratt. Ratt’s 1985 album Invasion of Your Privacy is basically a perfect example of what made glam such a scene– overdriven fuzzy guitars, massive sing-a-long choruses, shredding guitar solos, fat drums with…
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Dusty Springfield ‘Dusty in Memphis’ (1969)
Dusty in Memphis is Dusty Springfield’s magnum opus, an amalgamation of Memphis soul and British orchestral pop that over time has grown in stature to be regarded as one of the all-time great albums. The album was actually a pretty significant commercial flop upon its release 1969 (even with top 10 single “Son of A…
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Matchbox 20 ‘Yourself or Someone Like You’ (1996)
As a 90’s kid Yourself or Someone Like You is one of those albums you knew was big when you were growing up but never fully completely grasped just how popular it was until you do a quick review on Wikipedia two decades later. To this day it stands as one of the Top 100…
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Bruce Springsteen ‘Born In The U.S.A.’ (1984)
It’s a well-worn trope at this point that when “Born In The U.S.A.” comes on someone will loudly exclaim “Hey buddy ya’ know this song is actually a protest song about how politicians conveniently drape themselves in the flag but then ignore the needs of our working-class military members once they return from service.” That…
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Dire Straits ‘Brothers In Arms’ (1985)
Dire Straits magnum opus’ Brothers In Arms is a landmark achievement in sound that has been one of my favorite albums of since I first heard it as a teenager. To this day I still get chills when I hear the stinging precision of Mark Knopfler’s incredible guitar riff that kicks off “Money For Nothing”…
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Buddy Guy ‘A Man And The Blues’ (1968)
Buddy Guy has influenced some of the most legendary guitar players of all-time– classic icons like Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix to contemporary players like Gary Clark Jr. and John Mayer have all taken inspiration from Buddy Guy over the years, borrowing from his vast catalog of frenetic and iconic runs over the fretboard. If…
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Jewel ‘Pieces Of You’ (1995)
Jewel’s personal history is quite intriguing. She grew up in the wilderness of Alaska on a 770 acre homestead that lacked running water, had no heat, only possessed a single outhouse, and her primary food source was anything her family could kill or can. She had a love for music at a young age– growing…
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Huey Lewis & The News ‘Fore!’ (1986)
Huey Lewis & The News occupy a spot in music history as one of the quintessential 80’s power pop bands. They had this folksy charm that was undeniable– from the classic rhythm & blues and doo wop influences, to the gorgeous soft rock chord progressions, to the full band sound. Everything about Huey Lewis was…
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Minus the Bear ‘Omni’ (2010)
Minus the Bear’s alternative prog rock bonafides had been well established by the time 2010’s Omni was released. As a high schooler I burned up their debut album Highly Refined Pirates, which featured math rock staples such as “Monkey!!!Knife!!!Fight!!!” and “Absinthe Party At The Fly Honey Warehouse”. These were the days when alternative indie bands…
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Judas Priest ‘British Steel’ (1980)
If Black Sabbath’s Paranoid was the album that defined heavy metal in the 70’s, Judas Priest’s British Steel was the album that defined heavy metal in the 80’s. Featuring early elements of thrash, glam metal, and hard rock, Judas Priest took the slow plodding sludge grooves of the previous era, turned up the BPM, and…
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Kool & The Gang ‘Celebrate!’ (1980)
Celebrate! marked the end of Kool & The Gang’s hipness as the band transitioned from ultra-smooth funk practitioners to the radio-friendly R&B disco group that shot to the top of the charts with this platinum selling album. Artistic bonafides aside it’s hard to argue with the results– lead single “Celebration” was a smash hit, and…
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Thin Lizzy ‘Jailbreak’ (1976)
Thin Lizzy is one of the most underrated bands in rock history in my opinion. Whether it’s the super smooth vocal stylings of Phil Lynott, the twin guitar harmonies of Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson that remain to this day the sound of their generation, or the pulsating rhythm section of Brian Downey, there is…
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The Weeknd ‘After Hours’ (2020)
The Weeknd’s brand of dark and brooding R&B was a revelation for the genre in the mid 2010’s, breathing new and fresh life into a storied but somewhat stale industry. On After Hours The Weeknd took those R&B roots and pushed everything a bit further– delving into dream pop and synth-driven instrumentation, crafting a semi-concept…
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The Stooges ‘Funhouse’ (1970)
The Stooges were a band seemingly lost in time, a decade ahead of their peers in the late 60’s. Throwing elements of psychedelia, American garage rock, and British blues into a blender, Fun House is effectively the first seed of punk rock that caused legions of bands to follow in their footsteps. The Clash, Ramones,…
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Clipse ‘Lord Willin’ (2002)
Real life brothers Pusha T and Malice started their rap career in 1994 following Malice’s return from serving in the armed forces. However, it would take eight years for their debut album Lord Willin’ to come out after their original LP Exclusive Audio Footage was shelved by then record label Elektra following a disappointing reception…
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Blink-182 ‘Enema of the State’ (1999)
If you were in middle/high school during the early aughts it was basically impossible to avoid Blink-182. They were the most influential pop punk band in history at a time when pop punk was absolutely everywhere, looked the part with the spiked blond hair and Venice Beach skater garb, and possessed a real talent for…
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Turnstile ‘GLOW ON’ (2021)
Turnstile’s 2021 album GLOW ON was somewhat of a defining moment for hardcore music in that it broke down a lot of barriers for the genre commercially. This was an album that made multiple mainstream “Best Of” lists for album of the year (not just rock album, album album), charted at #30 on the Billboard…
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Missy Elliott ‘Miss E… So Addictive’ (2001)
From the top of 2001’s Miss E… So Addictive it’s clear Missy Elliott is here to have a damn good time. And have a good time she does, spitting sexual innuendo and club drug references at reckless abandon throughout the 63-minute runtime. The instant classic “Get Ur Freak On” is what Elliott will always be…
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The Pharcyde ‘Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde’ (1992)
There’s an old saying that goes “If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.” When The Pharcyde named their 1992 album Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde they certainly talked like a duck. And almost immediately after hitting the first note, it’s clear The Pharcyde is here to also…
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Derek and the Dominos ‘Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs’ (1970)
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs is Eric Clapton’s finest career work in my opinion, which is truly saying something for a man who stands as probably the most influential and accomplished guitar player in rock history. Formed after the breakup of his previous supergroup Blind Faith and their excellent self-titled album in 1969, Clapton…
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Westside Gunn ‘Pray For Paris’ (2020)
Westside Gunn’s Pray For Paris (along with having absolutely epic album artwork) is a study in mid-90’s hip-hop enunciatioon and flow set in the century of modern musical production elements. For someone who doesn’t listen to a ton of modern hip hop, Westside Gunn provides a convenient portal to the past where hip-hop vocal production…
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Dream Theater ‘Images and Words’ (1992)
Dream Theater is one of the “Big Three” in prog metal, and alongside Queensrÿche and Fates Warning helped prog metal become more than just a small niche genre stuck in between the demise of 80’s glam metal and 90’s alternative rock. Images and Words is an eclectic grab bag of prog rock influences– from New…
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Bon Iver ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’ (2008)
The story behind the recording of For Emma Forever Ago is almost mythological in nature. Bon Iver (who at that point was simply known as Justin Vernon) had just gone through two particularly nasty breakups– the first with his band of childhood friends that had been together for over a decade, and the second to…
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Public Enemy ‘It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back’ (1988)
Long before Flavor Flav became a reality show punchline, Public Enemy came out of Long Island and changed the face of hip hop with their socially conscious and purposeful blend of hip hop. Chuck D, Flavor Flav, DJ Terminator X, and production group The Bomb Squad pulled no punches in detailing their version of the…
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The Get Up Kids ‘Something To Write Home About’ (1999)
Something To Write Home About was one of my first introductions to emo and pop punk as a middle schooler. At that time they were just another band in the lineup that comprised my burgeoning love for music– emo and pop punk in particular were just beginning to take off, and I was jumping on…
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Soundgarden ‘Superunknown’ (1993)
Superunknown is a hard rock masterpiece, merging disparate elements of grunge, heavy metal, alternative rock, and punk into a vicious pistol whip of a record. There simply was no band better at combining elements of the snakelike grooves of Black Sabbath, the electric vocal hooks of AC/DC, and the raw primal energy of Nirvana. Simply…
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Engelbert Humperdinck ‘A Man Without Love’ (1968)
It’s rare that I use bullet points in album reviews, but if there’s one man that deserves the honor it is the one and only Engelbert Humperdinck. A true blue crooner, Humperdinck’s wonderfully rich baritone has been dazzling audiences for over 60 years and counting. During that time he’s sold over 140 million records, became…
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Lil’ Kim ‘Hard Core’ (1996)
Born out of hip-hop supergroup Junior M.A.F.I.A. with The Notorious B.I.G., Lil’ Kim’s debut album Hard Core is exactly what the name suggests– a raucously raunchy celebration of sex, carnal pleasure, and female sexual liberation. When your opening track features a minute-long pornographic skit about a guy going to a peep show to watch Lil’…
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Pony Bradshaw ‘Calico Jim’ (2021)
Taking place in the rural decay of North Georgia, Pony Bradshaw’s 2021 classic Calico Jim chronicles the lives and stories of a myriad of eccentric characters existing on the outskirts of society– sixth generation hillbillies, snakeskin-boot wearing rich men, crystal meth-addicted Mennonites, and everything in between. These are stories that exist in 21st Century America,…
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Kanye West ‘Graduation’ (2007)
The legacy of Kanye West as a cultural figure is still being written and it’s sure as hell complicated. Following a public break with his long-time wife Kim Kardashian and a failed Presidential bid in 2020, West (who was always a lightning rod for controversy) delved further into the obscene, making numerous antisemitic comments that…
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The Offspring ‘Americana’ (1998)
The Offspring’s 1998 album Americana is a trip down memory lane, a time when punk rock was having its mainstream moment and MTV was pushing those music videos with reckless abandon. The Offspring were one of the first punk bands to break out into the mainstream with their (wait for it) smash-hit Smash, followed it…
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The Crickets ‘The Chirping Crickets’ (1957)
Despite dying at the age of 22 years old in a tragic plane crash that was called “The Day The Music Died” (an event forever immortalized in Don McLean’s cultural cornerstone “American Pie”), Buddy Holly was a pioneering force in the meteoric rise of rock and roll in the mid-1950’s. Along with helping to establish…
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Brian Fallon ‘Local Honey’ (2020)
Brian Fallon’s rise as a Jersey-born songwriter has drawn a lot of comparisons to the legendary Bruce Springsteen, and it’s clear at points during Fallon’s career with The Gaslight Anthem he was trying to fill those shoes a little too earnestly. Fallon’s solo career has been equally nostalgia-infused and songwriting driven, but in 2020’s Local…
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Robert Palmer ‘Clues’ (1980)
Robert Palmer’s transition from blue-eyed soul singer to New Wave artist was just getting started on Clues, and the album as a whole sits in this distinctly 80’s space of being multiple things all at once. You have the old-school Rolling Stones esque classic rock thump of “Sulky Girl” sandwiched in between the synth pop…
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Wolfhand ‘The Devil Arrives’ (2020)
A lone figure in a wide brimmed black hat appears just over the skyline. His long and dark leather jacket blows in the breeze, flowing with the dusty desert wind and yet unperturbed by it, a man who transcends . The silver glint of his revolvers, one-a-side dutifully attached to his hip as they have…
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Melissa Etheridge ‘Yes I Am’ (1993)
Melissa Etheridge and “Come To My Window” in particular was a staple for me and my first girlfriend in 8th grade. It was our record and a fixture in the mixtapes we would trade with one another to help articulate our feelings. For that reason Etheridge will always represent young love and all the naive…
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About the Author
Jason Matthew Plank listens to copious amounts of music and writes about one album each day. He is currently active in the bands Related to Strangers (post-hardcore) and Kindergarten Cartel (punk covers of children’s nursery rhymes).
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