I am not a huge Aimee Mann fan, but her Bachelor No. 2 album was essential to my music history. I loved every song on it.
There are eras of Rush which might suit you best. The first era was to be a Zeppelin style band which went onto Prog rock further than Zep did. 2112 was the pinnacle of that rock period.
Then there was the start of some keyboards period, where the hits like Tom Sawyer and Spirit of the radio came from. Moving pictures would be the one for that, though my personal favourite bridges the two eras, and was my first Rush album: A farewell to kings.
Later electronica and studio production took over and they charted frequently, Signals is my choice for that period, though any of them are excellent.
And the fourth era was kind of a re-rockening, with a mix, they had rap in one part, they were grungey in another, they went back to more like the original heavier stuff. Personally this is the period I never could get a grip on.
They lost and gained fans every era shift, and some people claim to be Rush fans but dropped them at one of the era changes. I suppose I am one of those now, I do go back and try to get into one of the later album.
So it really depends on what music you favour as to where to start.
I’m surprised nobody mentioned Peter Gabriel’s solo stuff. I’ll cite a few non-hits.
“So” is a great album. One of my faves from it: Mercy Street.
It was inspired by Anne Sexton. I don’t know anything about her.
Another fantastic album by him: Us. If you’re ever going through a divorce and you need an album to say what you’re thinking, I recommend it highly.
I’ll choose the song “Secret World” from that.
And the thing about Peter is that you really need to check out some of his live recordings. For example, you may know this one from “Say Anything.” It was on the “So” album. Live? Wow…
Or this one, with Nusret Fateh Ali Khan et many others.
I was born in 1963, and when I was a teenager music was very important, and I thought the best way to know Rock & Roll was not to go for the current stiff, but to go back to the beginning and buy either great albums or the greatest his of groups like the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Byrds, the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, the Eagles, etc. I found that (this was really true about the Rolling Stones) it was hard to find an album with hits. Maybe one song (but maybe not), and I made some mistakes. Like with the Eagles, I knew their first two albums inside out, but man, I really became an eclectic listener because they didn’t have many hits (one song, and a song & a half). But I lucky to have a friend who had every Beatle album, and I listened to every time I went over. So, the Beatles were off the list. I never knew I was so damn smart in 1977 when I started high school, but I knew every Beatle album and every song they released. But in 1977, the big groups were the Grateful Dead and Fleetwood Mac, and if you talked about the Beatles you were a Geek looking for trouble. When I bought “The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl”, and thought it was a big deal because it was the first album with live Beatle songs, I kept it to myself. And when I bought a black T-Shirt with the 4 Beatles (the White Album pics) printed on the front, I only wore it around the house. Fortunately, Peter Frampton, Boston, and Meatloaf were new, but still, you didn’t talk about them at school either. Between the years 1977 and 1981, the only acceptable shirts were “The Grateful Dead”, “The Rolling Stones”, “Van Halen”, “Lynyrd Skynyrd”, and maybe “The Who”, and “The Police”. If you wore anything else, everyone knew who you were (you were looking to get pushed around). By the time I finished HS, I had over 100 albums, and I thought 100 was “the mark”, something I could mention at lunch. But some of the albums were embarrassing. I had to cover John Lennon albums with “The Band’s Greatest Hits”, Steve Forbert with “The Best of ELP,” and Ian Hunter with The Doors “LA Woman” (they were “in”). Van Halen and Rush came out late and weren’t that great for the mid '70’s album lover, and Billy Joel, Ozzy Ozborne and Bruce were for girls.
I always knew I was wasting money to go after current hits by new groups that might not stick around, and of course… I was wrong. Thank god everything has been reduced to the size of an atom, and no one will ever know. Peer pressure never goes away. 
Hounds of Love - Kate Bush
I’m hearing more about Kate Bush, but I had actually heard of her before Stranger Things brought her a little resurgence to the public mind. My first experience was actually hearing a cover of Running Up That Hill by Within Temptation, one of my very favorite bands.
I thought I should probably take in Hounds of Love, her biggest album.
My thoughts:
Yeah, it’s a really good album. It’s not absolutely outstanding for me, but I’d say it has a nice set of 5 or so really good songs. I am uninfluenced by others, but the songs I liked a lot are:
Running Up That Hill <–I already knew this one
Cloudbursting
Jig of Life
Hello Earth
The Morning Fog
Anyway, it’s a really solid album.
I always thought that her first album, The Kick Inside was the big album for her. It was the most successful in the UK. The others were successful, but she was famous already there. I think you may be putting the template of famousness based on being heard of in the US…
I’ve just listened to the album The Kick Inside, for the first time in 40 years, and I recognise most of the songs. I guess I liked the album when I was 10, and that (along with the one with Babooska on it) are representative of Kate Bush as an artist.
She had a little revival around 1985 where Running up that hill was a bit of a hit, but apart from featuring with Peter Gabriel on the song Don’t give up (where I guess most non brits would know her), it wasn’t her biggest album.
Never For Ever. Best album art ever?
Wow. That’s a cool cover, I don’t think I’d looked at it before now (Babooska was a single, so I didn’t see the album). To give the equivalence to other artists, I thought at first it would perhaps Queen becoming famous because of Hammer To Fall, but that’s probably too much like previous Queen. I concluded that it’s like if Led Zeppelin was being unknown in the US until someone covered “All of My Love”.
For a real-world equivalent, it’s like Blur being unknown in the US until “Song 2”, which ended up being their only US hit.
Well, not really, because Song 2 isn’t completely unusual a song for Blur, but Running up that hill isn’t really Kate Bush as I recognise it (more the sort of neutered Peter Gabriel style dull music of the mid to late 80s UK pop charts).
Which would you say is her best album? The Kick Inside? I am really enjoying Hounds of Love, especially Cloudbursting, which I think is my favorite song on it. Because I was already so familiar with Running Up The Hill, it didn’t really catch me all that much other than the fact it is a good song.
Rush is such a big band with so many albums, I’m actually having a really hard time getting into them. I honestly like the Tom Sawyer track on Moving Pictures, but I will probably have daggers thrown at me when I say that the rest doesn’t stand out much for me.
I know they are a band with many albums and a lot of evolution, but I have yet to hear anything I fell in love with.
Oh, yes, I had heard Tom Sawyer at some point in my life, perhaps not all the way through, but I was vaguely aware of it.
Let’s not forget the other template that is the entire concept of this thread. Not only am I in the US, but I did not grow up listening to much music. It’s a bit unpredictable what I’ll recognize.
I’d take a shot at The Kick Inside being the classic (I don’t know the rest, only Babooshka off Never for Ever was a hit), I’m not really a fan. Personally I’ve never heard Hounds of Love in full, it was past the time of me listening to her, but the main song is very much of it’s time, and sits alongside the likes of Dire Straits: Money for Nothing, Fleetwood Mac: Rumours, Chris Rea: Road to Hell and Peter Gabriels: Go in it’s generic style (but not as massive hits as those, more trying to be by being similar).
I guess the original point wasn’t about being the best album, maybe some of the album tracks on HOL are excellent, and like her older stuff. I don’t know, I wasn’t fan and didn’t listen to much of it. It was kind of being about being THE classic album from the artist, which isn’t HOL. That was the album with the last hit before she faded away, and the fact that Stranger Things resurrected it and it’s now finally a hit in the US doesn’t really change that. It’s probably the first time most brits have heard it for 35 years, and they’d probably forgotten that it was one of Kate Bushes hits at all (*)…
I’d suggest if you like the album, you might also find the first few excellent, maybe ever better. But I suppose since it’s new to you, they might just annoy you.
(*) I reckon over the years as an artist fades away, they’re reduced to a “signature song”, the one song that everyone remembers, and is the one which always features on the radio. Sometimes this song changes, depending on it being a hit in a movie soundtrack. The likes of Abba gets reduced to Dancing Queen. Blondie to Atomic. You always head White Wedding by Billy Idol, but rarely ever Rebel Yell anymore. Hot Chocolate’s was Everyone’s a winner, until the Full Monty made it You Sexy Thing. Kate Bush’s would have been Wuthering heights, but she rarely features at all anymore, but now it will be Running up that hill.
Rush is my favourite band. Has been for 40 years. However, they have eras, whole chunks of albums where they completely changed their music, and a lot of fans just decided not to like them. I stuck with them to the last three albums (which not matter how much I tried, I never got into).
You kind of have to commit to listen to a Rush album, then play it over and over and let it settle in. Then you start liking different songs. It’s a long term project for a lot of them, to be taken over time. You can’t really do all of them at once, it won’t work.
The Eras of Rush:
First era: 1 album (first): Rush. Pure zeppelin clone of their rocky stuff. Pretty much avoid. They had a different drummer and didn’t know who they were yet. Drummer then left. Looking at the tracklist, I don’t even know most of the songs.
Second era: 3/4 albums: The early rocky prog. Fly by night. Caress of Steel. 2112. Possibly Farewell to kings (this is arguably the crossover and can be in the next era). They became like the good Zeppelin bits. Tolkien and Fantasy references in lyrics. Lyrics became denser. 2112 here is the definitive album, and probably THE Rush album for most people. I’d suggest this as an entry point.
Third era: Prog rock with keyboards. AFTK (see above). Hemispheres. Permanent Waves. Moving Pictures. They had hits from Moving Pictures. So that’s where you heard Tom Sawyer/Red Barchetta, they were hits from those. though Spirit of Radio, their biggest hit, was from Permanent Waves. So this is where they kind of became famous and big. A lot of fans left after Moving Pictures.
Fourth Era: Electronic rock. Signals. Grace under pressure. Power Windows. Hold your Fire. Presto. Definite change, and some more lesser hits made it out. But they embraced keyboards completely and some fans left because of the lack of guitar. Signals would be the entry point, but with some repeat listens every one of these is a gem.
Fifth era: changing about and just doing their stuff. The albums after this. I’d do these last. They tried rappy bits. Grungy songs. Also tried going back to their roots.
Second and Third Era rush weren’t often about the main songs, the hits. They were about the album tracks left over, the instrumental. Fan’s greats were the likes of YYZ, Natural Science, La Villa Strangiato, The Trees. To listen to a Rush album for the hits is completely missing the point of it.
My entry point was A Farewell to Kings (alongside me listening to Led Zeppelin IV), but maybe some fans don’t rate it. It had a longish proggy song to enjoy, and a bunch of good short ones to enjoy too. Perhaps that might work for you.
Over time my favourites changed. I like the niche, less successful albums of theirs. and not the hits. Hemispheres and Caress of Steel are my favourites, but I’d not start with either of those.
BUMP
It’s been a couple years.
What are people’s thoughts on Christopher Cross? I thought I’d try his albums, but have always heard he couldn’t equal his debut.
Is he good?
Is he GOOD? That I don’t know, I know that I like individual songs of his and the rest tends to feel like pleasant musak. The good sort mind you, that you can let your mind wander along with or just relax too, but nothing I’m actively listening along with.
I’d advise streaming a few albums, and if you need music to mellow too, consider a Best of Album (which is what I have) for a quit afternoon of listening.
But back to my first point, the only songs I’ll stop and actively listen too are Sailing and Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do). There are plenty of other popular songs, but those are the two that work for me personally.
Two years and it goes from Rush to Christopher Cross?
What a long strange trip it’s been.
I know this is a bit late, but - no-one should ever have to Stockholm themselves into liking a band.