I’ll stand by my Post #10.
Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run
Mary Chapin Carpenter - Come On Come On
Richard and Linda Thompson - Shoot Out the Lights
Fairport Convention - What We Did On Our Holidays, Liege and Lief
Buffalo Springfield
Jackson Browne - The Pretender
Warren Zevon - Life’ll Kill Ya, The Wind
Cruxshadows - Ethernaut
The Commitments - Soundtrack
Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense
Try Metallica s&m I think its great also
Ice Cube Preditor Rap
Garth Brooks Sevens Country
Makem and clancy consert Irish Folk
Cake Fashion Nugget alturnitive
and finally eyna watermark Clasical
Sorry about spelling
My contributions:
The Police - Synchronicity
Van Halen - 1984
The Eagles - The Very Best of The Eagles
Michael Jackson - Thriller
The Offspring - Americana
Bryan Adams - Reckless
Terence Trent d’Arby - Introducing The Hardline According to Terence Trent d’Arby
The Clash - The Essential Clash
Prince - Love Symbol, Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, 3121
Santana - Supernatural
Billy Idol - Whiplash Smile (I was torn between this and Rebel Yell, but I think Whiplash Smile is the better album).
I really think threads like this need to have a restriction on the number of albums a roster can offer. While just about every album listed here is a good one I don’t think many fall into the category of “essential”. With posters like stpauler* dumping 40+ offerings things tend to get lost in the white noise of the thread. As much as I like Poi Dog, I’m not sure they fall under any definition of “essential”.
Treat these threads like Heisman voting where you only get to offer your top 3 albums or maybe limit to just one and make the respondents really think about which discs in their collection they’d want with them on a desert island.
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- stpauler, not picking on you, just using you as an example.
Well, in all fairness, I have about 9000 albums so culling the herd down to 0.4% is pretty hard. I chose them as definitive additions to my music collection that I would replace in a heartbeat (and in some cases, I have replaced multiple times and have upgraded from vinyl to cassette to CD).
I’ll add:
Joshua Judges Ruth by Lyle Lovett. Fantastic from beginning to end. What a great song writer.
Well here are my choises to cover generas I’m familiar with;
Blues: “From the Cradle” Eric Clapton
Classic Rock: “Who’s Next” The Who
Oldies: “Pet Sounds” The Beach Boys
Punk: “Punk in Drublic” NOFX
Ska: “Turn the Radio Off” Real Big Fish
Modern Rock: “So Much for the Afterglow” Everclear
Rap: “Licensed to Ill” Beastie Boys
Country: “Everywhere We Go” Kenny Chesney
Pop: “Thriller” Michael Jackson
Metal: “LD 50” Mudvayne
AC/DC - Back in Black
Alice in Chains - Dirt
A Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Marauders
Beastie Boys - Licence to Ill
Beastie Boys - Pauls Boutique
Beastie Boys - Ill Communication
Beck - Odeley
Blues Traveler - Four
Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA
Coldplay - X&Y
Counting Crows - August and Everything After
Dire Straights - Brothers in Arms
Dr Dre - The Chronic
Green Day - Dookie
Green Day - American Idiot
Linkin Park - Meteora
Linkin Park - Minutes to Midnight
Moby - Play
Nirvana - Nevermind
Notorious BIG - Ready to Die
NWA - Straight Outta Compton
Red Hot Chilly Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magic
Red Hot Chilly Peppers - Californication
Red Hot Chilly Peppers - By the Way
REM - Eponymous
REM - Green
Snoop Dogg - Doggystyle
Soundgarden - Superunknown
Smashing Pumpkins - Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness (double album)
The Killers - Sam’s Town
The Police - Synchronicity
U2 - Achtung Baby
U2 - The Joshua Tree
U2 - The Unforgetable Fire
U2 - How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
Ok, I’ll try to hold it to the one standout best of any artist, but a few just have to have two:
Saga - Worlds Apart
Blue Oyster Cult - Agents of Fortune
Camel - The Snow Goose
Camel - Moonmadness
Ambrosia - Ambrosia
Alan Parsons Project - Tales Of Mystery And Imagination
Alan Parsons Project - I Robot
AC/DC - Back in Black
Black Sabbath - Sabotage
Bonnie Raitt - Fundamental
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmo’s Factory
Danny Gatton - Cruisin’ Deuces
Deep Purple - Machine Head
Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms
FM - Black Noise
Gary Moore - After Hours
Golden Earring - Moontan
The Guess Who - American Woman
Indigenous - Circle
Jean-Luc Ponty - The Gift of Time
Jimmy Thackery & the Drivers - Empty Arms Motel
Jonny Lang - Lie to Me
Les Dudek - Say No More
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Soul to Soul
Supertramp - Breakfast In America
UK - Danger Money
Ok, I’ll stop now. Gotta disagree with the OP, though; there’s no such thing as “good music”. Everything I listed is, to me, absolutely great and unassailable. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that some reading this will find various things on my list to be tripe or some other dismissive term, just as I find some of others’ essentials to be anything but. The OP is unlikely to find everything I listed to be to his liking.
You really really should get Cowboy Junkies “The Trinity Sessions”. I’ve listened to that literally more than a thousand times. If I could only have one CD to listen to for the rest of my life, I’d have to pick that.
Linkin Park? It better be a hell of a lot different from the rest of their albums. All their songs sound the exactly same. and follow the exact same formula.
Jeff Buckley - Grace
The Innocence Mission - Glow
Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
Elvis Costello - Imperial Bedroom
Wilco - just about anything
Nick Lowe - Dig My Mood or The Convincer
Tindersticks - Tindersticks (not to be confused with Tindersticks - Tindersticks, I’m talking about the record that opens with El Diablo En El Ojo)
Neil Finn - One Nil
Crowded House - Woodface
I’m forgetting about 30 others…
Some desert-island discs of mine (although any list of merely ten would reduce me to insanity – insanity, I tells ya!), and in spite of the numbering, really in no order:
- Abbey Road – The Beatles
- English Settlement – XTC [get the 2000 Toshiba/EMI digital remaster with original packaging]
- Discipline or B’Boom Live in Argentina (2-disc official bootleg)-- King Crimson
- BBC Radio 1 Live in Concert (1980) – XTC. Well, they are my all-time favorite band.
- 45 RPM [The Singles of] – **The The ** [this is a two-disc set, with disc 2 being the 12" remixes]
- Something Else – The Kinks
- Spilt Milk – Jellyfish
- …the Db’s (Stands For Decibels/Repercussion) – The Db’s [this is a budget two-fer reissue, their first two LPs on one disc]
- Liquid White Light – Poi Dog Pondering. (Another vote for the Poi Dogs! It helps that it’s a double live album.)
- Remain In Light or Stop Making Sense-- Talking Heads
It is a more varied album than Hybrid Theory or Meteora, and much mellower overall, though there are still a couple heavy songs, and one or two really fun ones.
And in trying to debunk your claims…gah. I never thought they were that bad about sounding the same all the time (there are worse offenders). But, and I hate to say this…dammit, you’re right.
That said, I don’t really care as long as I can listen to Hands Held High.
Rap…Public Enemy “Fear of a Black Planet”
Modern Rock…Alice in Chains “Dirt”
80’s…The Smiths “The Queen is Dead”
70’s rock…Stones “Exile on Main St.”
Punk…Ramones “Leave Home”
Alt-Country…WILCO “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”
Sad Guy With Guitar and Stool…Elliot Smith “Either/Or”
Just a few albums I feel strongly are must haves…according to genre.
I really like the taste here 
Joni Mitchell - Blue
The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (top priority)
Elvis Costello - My Aim Is True
Prince - Dirty Mind
I could probably just listen to these four albums for the rest of my life if I had to.
Sometimes I feel like the only person in the world who likes Hothouse Flowers.
Like Nickleback? 
You spelled Creed wrong. I mean Fuel. Or was that Our Lady Peace, Three Doors Down, Third Eye Blind, or the distinctive sound of Daughtry?