I became weirdly obsessed by the Beatles at a very young age too -- I'm talking, like, 3 or 4-years-old here. This was before I'd even heard their music! I can remember asking my Mum what the band members' names were and trying really hard to memorise them.

By around age 7, I had discovered the so-called Red and Blue compilation albums (1962-1966 and 1967-1970) in my parents' record collection and had quietly spirited both of those upstairs to my bedroom, where they were on almost constant rotation on my second-hand turntable.

For a lot of years I believed or assumed that those two albums represented the Beatles' entire output. I was therefore amazed at age 13 or so, when a class mate at school bought in a cassette tape of the Abbey Road album. I was amazed to see song titles on it that I had never heard of ("Maxwell's Silver Hammer", "You Never Give Me Your Money", "The End" etc). That was the moment when I realised that there must be other Beatles albums out there that featured untold numbers of songs that I hadn't heard.

I went to my local library and in the referance section I found a book called The Beatles Album File and Complete Discography by Jeff Russell. In it, I found details of every Beatles album and I can vividly remember marvelling at exotic song titles like "Tomorrow Never Knows", "Within You Without You", "I'm Looking Through You" and "Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey".

Starting on my 15th Birthday and Christmas of that year, I began to ask relatives for Beatles LPs as presents, since, on my limited paper round wage, I couldn't afford many records. I was also careful to ask for the albums in strictly chronological order, so that I got to hear Please Please Me first, then With The Beatles, followed by A Hard Day's Night and so on. The reason I did this was because I wanted to experience those albums in the order they were originally released to better appreciate the band's musical development. I guess I was already a bit of a Beatles obsessive by then.

I agree. The '90s were a very exciting time for popular music generally, I think.

As far as Grunge goes, it was only Nirvana and Pearl Jam that I was into enough to buy their albums. There was the odd song by other Grunge bands that I liked ("Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden and "Hunger Strike" by Temple of the Dog come to mind), but other than that, I wasn't really into Grunge at all. I was much more into what was going on in the UK indie/alternative rock scene in the '90s (Madchester, Shoegaze, Baggy, Britpop etc). That stuff was much, much more interesting to me than Grunge.

As I noted in my comments on Vitalogy, I reckon Pearl Jam's first 5 albums are pretty faultless. Musically, they were like a classic rock band from the late '60s and early '70s, but it was Eddie Vedder's distinctive vocals and thought-provoking lyrics that really made them interesting, as far as I'm concerned.

Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, on the other hand, were something special. Really, really special. Cobain was one of the best and most unique songwriters and performers of my generation.

Ha! That "Merry Christmas From the Family" is great! Some very sharp social observation there, but all delivered with genuine affection and not a little nostalgic fondness.

#5 - Parklife by Blur




Released in April '94, Blur's third album was really the first mainstream smash hit album of the Britpop era. For a lot of people, Parklife and its attendant hit singles were the first time that they'd ever heard the band or indie/Britpop music. It was also the album that took the whole Britpop movement from the murky columns of the NME and Melody Maker onto the front pages of the UK's tabloid press.

As someone who had been a fan of Blur for a few years by this point, I regarded Parklife as something of a retread of their previous album Modern Life is Rubbish. But having said that, it's definitely a bolder, more confident, and more commercial sounding record than its predecessor, which is why it was such a success, of course. Overall, the album is quite an eclectic mix musically, from the Euro synth-pop of "Girls & Boys", the sophisticated Parisian romance and faux James Bond-theme stylings of "To the End", and the Cockney knees-up sing-along of the title track.

Parklife is a very strong album, made by a band at the peak of their powers. I'm gonna pick the bouncy synth-driven smash hit "Girls & Boys" to highlight the album. Its tacky synths, Disco drumming, and '80s-style bass line perfectly captures the hedonistic, flesh market nightclubs of places like Falaraki and Corfu in Greece, or Ibiza, Benidorm or Magaluf in Spain, where young British holidaymakers go to binge-drink, load up on ecstasy pills, and f*ck anything that moves…

#6 - Vitalogy by Pearl Jam




Pearl Jam's third album is by far their strangest and most experimental. On the one hand, you have standard stadium rock anthems like "Better Man" and "Nothingman", but these sit alongside weird, Tom Waits-esque things like "Bugs", the mantra-like funk of "Aye Davanita", and the joyously punk and thrash metal-influenced "Spin the Black Circle", which is a thundering paean to vinyl records.

Many of the songs also seem concerned with the pressures of fame and resultant lack of privacy that fame brings, which gives the whole album a nervous, paranoid tension. There's a palpable siege mentality to a lot of singer Eddie Vedder's lyrics. This is perhaps best exemplified by the claustrophobic, snarling "Not for You".

Surprisingly, the album's disparate musical excursions all sit together rather well. Vitalogy is very much an album that creates and inhabits its own musical world, with lean, stripped-down playing and a taught sense of anger simmering throughout. I consider Pearl Jam's first five albums to all be pretty much faultless, but depending on which day you asked me, I might say that Vitalogy was their best.

Glad to see this making an appearance in your list, as it only narrowly missed mine.

I pretty much agree with your assessment of it being a patchy album and having all the best songs loaded near the start. When it's great, like on "Wildflowers", "You Don't Know How It Feels" and "It's Good to Be King" it's prime Petty, but far too much of the album just seems noticeably below par for a songwriter who'd done great albums like Full Moon Fever and Into the Great Wide Open just prior to this. The album's patchy nature is ultimately why it didn't make my list.