What are the iconic albums of your young formative years?

[onekidanddone]

• Tom Lehrer - That Was the Year That Was
• Commoners Crown - Steeleye Span
• The Who by Numbers - The Who
• Sounds of Silence - Simon and Garfunkel 
• Tribute to Woody Guthrie - A bunch of people

To name just a few.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Ooh, @onekidanddone, good topic! My mom listened to lots of music when I was very young, but I started picking out my own music in the mid 1970s. Here are a handful of the albums that have always spoken to me (in random order):

• Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack
• The Eagles -- Hotel California
• Van Halen -- Van Halen
• Elton John -- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
• Billy Joel -- The Stranger and 52nd Street
• Stevie Wonder -- Songs in the Key of Life
• Styx -- The Grand Illusion and Pieces of Eight
• Fleetwood Mac -- Rumors and Fleetwood Mac
• Bruce Springsteen -- Born to Run
• Peter Frampton -- Frampton Comes Alive
• Bee Gees -- Main Course

[DaniLouisiana]

Fleetwood Mac -Rumors (kinda explains my daughter's nane-lol)

Heart-Dreamboat Annie

Bad Company- Bad Co.

Eagles-The Long Run

[clueliss]

I was raised on top 40 radio (WHB on the AM Dial if you're from the KC area and old enough to remember).  However in 8th grade (we moved between 7th and 8th grade) in discovered FM radio and because I am such a dedicated bookworm used to hang out in the band room before school (band was 1st hour) instead of walking the halls with everyone else and read a book.  The cool guys in band (mostly the drum section) used to commandeer the stereo in the band room and turn on KY-102 (Album-oriented rock station).  So my music taste became formed by:

Styx, Boston, Foreigner, Supertramp, etc etc etc in the mid to late 70's.  Making the progression to hard rock/metal in the 80's when I was in college.  

[ADoyle90815]

When I was a senior in high school, Kurt Cobain died, so the Nirvana albums were big. My city also had KNAC 105.5FM which was the metal station, so a lot of the metal bands were still huge, until that station went off the air in 1995, their final song being Metallica's Fade to Black. The reason it went off the air was that a Spanish language station took over, but it eventually returned as an internet radio station.

[catlady]

U2 -- The Joshua Tree

[Jucifer]

It's so hard to narrow it down to a manageable list!

In high school I had to hide my records... because fundie parents.

In the late 70s where I lived the rock radio stations all had the same playlist of top 40 songs.  That was all there was and you were supposed to like it. I just got bored.

I used to drive half an hour to the nearest 'big city' to find records that I liked.

So here's some of them:

Never Mind the Bollocks, Sex Pistols

Songs the Lord Taught Us, The Cramps

Rock n' Roll High School, The Ramones

New Traditionalists, Devo

London Calling, The Clash

Transformer, Lou Reed

1969, The Velvet Underground

Also, my older brother let me borrow his records.  I still love Bowie, the Zombies and the Byrds and the Beatles, especially Rubber Soul.  Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys.  Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited.  Good times.

I remember sneaking downstairs to watch Night Flight when we first got cable tv. They played a video by Stiff Little Fingers; Alternative Ulster. I was a punk rock virgin at the time.  In the beginning it sounded like just noise to me ... but by the end I was converted.    It was amazing!!!   I never looked back.

 

 

[drivingmishcrazy]

Let's see, the first album I ever owned was Britney Spears, "Baby One More Time" on cassette when I was in kindergarten, my aunt got it for me, much to my mother's chagrin. I also remember a little Aaliyah, Mariah Carey, N*Sync, Ashanti, Christina Aguilera, Usher (My Boo was my favorite song for a long time), Jennifer Lopez, lots of Destiny's Child and I worshipped Celine Dion. Still do, actually. When I got to be around 10-12 I developed a taste for musicals, Josh Groban, older Boyz II Men stuff, and Evanescence was the only "rock" music I liked.

Around 14 I decided I liked My Chemical Romance, Panic! At The Discount, and Fall Out Boy, and somewhere around that time I decided my favorite band was, of all things, Sonic Youth (I still love them).

At 16 I became obsessed with metal of all kinds, I listened to Ozzy, Megadeth, Metallica, Pantera, Anthrax, Lamb of God, Havok, Cannibal Corpse, I could write an itemized list. That lasted until I was about 20 but I still love them all. Actually, I still like most of these. I also developed a taste for country music in my teens that died and was reborn after moving to Wyoming.

As you can imagine, at the ripe old age of 23, my music tastes are extremely eclectic.

[applejack]

Pearl Jam - Ten
Soundgarden - Superunknown
Nirvana - Nevermind and In Utero.
Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville
REM - Out of Time
Dave Matthews Band - Under the Table and Dreaming
And
the Original Broadway Cast Recording of RENT

[jerkit]

I graduated HS in 2006. Albums that had the biggest impact on me and still influence my tastes now include the following:

The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most - Dashboard Confessional

A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar - Dashboard Confessional

Tell All Your Friends - Taking Back Sunday

Jagged Little Pill - Alanis Morissette

RENT

The Moon is Down - Further Seems Forever

Tragic Kingdom - No Doubt

So Jealous - Tegan and Sara

Little Earthquakes - Tori Amos

Ocean Avenue - Yellowcard

[keen23]

Mighty Mighty Bosstones- Don't Know How to Party

Pearl Jam- Ten

Green Day- Dookie

Alanis Morrisette - Jagged Little Pill

Nirvana- MTV Unplugged Recording

Weezer- Weezer

311- 311 (aka the Blue Album)

Blues Traveler- Four

 

I  have no shame in saying that these were probably the albums that broke all of these artists into the mainstream, but they were the albums that introduced these artists to me. I remember the first time I heard "Alive" by Pearl Jam. I stopped everything I was doing and just listened. It changed what music meant to me. 

[feministxtian]

Formative music:

The Monkees

Buffett

Fleetwood Mac

Styx

The Doobie Brothers 

Supertramp

REO Speedwagon

Skynyrd

Boz Scaggs,

Eagles

I sang and played guitar in bar bands from the time I was 15 until I was about 20. Loved singing Crystal Ball, Man In the Wilderness, Door Into Summer, Roll With The Changes, Tuesday's gone, Desperado, etc. 

[SnazzyNazzy]

The band/album that really got me into music was....

Rio, by Duran Duran.

I was 6yo when that came out, had MTV at the time too. I am STILL a diehard fan of Duran Duran, and I WILL be Mrs. LeBon, one of these days.

Funny story time...

Remember back in the day, some bands would release videotapes, that had all of their music videos on them? My mom rented me the Duran Duran one, when I was 7yo. She didn't know, and I didn't tell her, that said video, also contained their unedited videos of Girls on Film, and My Chauffeur. There were boobs EVERYWHERE. I watched the hell out of those two videos, when she was sleeping in on Saturday and Sunday morning.