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The Beatles - Revolver
My personal favorite Beatles album, this record has influenced an unknowable amount of music in the 48 years since it's release. The standout hit "Eleanor Rigby" has been covered numerous times, yet the original still sounds fresh and current half of a century later. -
The Kinks - The Village Green Preservation Society
While certainly lesser known than their British-Invasion counterparts, The Beatles, The Kinks have managed to stand the test of time as one of the great early forays into alternative rock. From the initial harmonies of the title-track opener, this album was obviously something different from what anyone else at the time was doing. It's easy to compare modern acts like Oasis or The Apples in Stereo to The Beatles, but some credit is due here as well. -
Led Zeppelin - IV
Hey, hey, mama, indeed. 'Black Dog', the fiery opener to Led Zeppelin IV is only the beginning of one of the best and most iconic sets of singles in history. It's a testiment to 'Stairway to Heaven''s icon status that songs as incredible as 'Black Dog' and 'Rock & Roll' are left to stand in the shadow. -
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
The music of this legendary album unfolds like a drug-induced daydream, filling the ears of the listener with a pleasant haze of slurred harmonies and ambient guitar riffs. Much of the album is so avant-garde that a song featuring a cash register as a percussion instrument is the most conventional thing to be found. -
Ramones - Ramones
The Ramones aimed to create a wall of rebelious sound with their self-titled album, and sure as hell, they suceeded. Every punk band that ever followed is, in some way, an imitation of this album. -
The Talking Heads - Remain in Light
As slick and poppy as the Ramones were brash and punk, The Talking Heads redefined radio-friendly rock & roll. The band somehow managed to take the rock attitude and look and mash it up with the catchiness and accessability of the soul and disco acts around them and turn it into something completely new. -
Bruce Springsteen - Born in the U.S.A.
The cover of this album was hanging on the wall of a coffee shop that I frequented in college, along with several other iconic albums of the time. What sets this album apart from its contemporaries was Springsteen's own star quality. He may not have been the greatest revolutionary in the songwriting world, and he certainly wasn't the best singer of his time, but goddamn if he didn't write exactly what everyone wanted to hear. -
Nirvana - Nevermind
Despite only releasing three albums in their too-short career, Nirvana changed the face of rock music just as much as The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. This album just turned 13, and its influence is still all over modern rock radio. Kurt Cobain and co. brought grunge to the scene and no one has been able to get rid of it since. (Although no one has ever managed to do it quite as well as the originals.) -
Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral
Nine Inch Nails clattered onto the rock scene in the mid-90's with a ferocity and inventiveness that hadn't been seen in popular music in a long time. Trent Reznor's blend of electronica, metal and heartbreaking songwriting defied any attempt at classification and doesn't sound even slightly dated today, a decade later. -
Radiohead - OK Computer
In some ways, this album was a throwback to the alternative and grungy sensibilities of music from earlier in the decade, but Radiohead managed to pull off a fresh feeling that Coldplay has been unsuccessfuly trying to replicate ever since. -
Arcade Fire - Funeral
Welcome to the mainstream, hipster culture. When Arcade Fire broke into the limelight in 2004 with their now-iconic Funeral album, it seemed like an underdog fairytale. In hindsight, we can see it was the birth of a movement, without which we would have no Mumford & Sons, no Lumineers and no Imagine Dragons - a sad collection of radio-ready indie-rockers, when compared with the original masters. -
Arctic Monkeys - AM
Too new to be an icon, this album makes this list based on the merits of its quality rather than its legacy. The first independantly-released indie record in the UK, AM is chock full of crunchy, catchy songs with slow heartbeat-like rhythms paired with agressive guitars and achingly beautiful lyrics.
