If we’re being competely literal, “album” just means “white thing” - as in “blank pages to put stuff on”. Of course it’s a short step from that to letting it mean “the collection of stuff that you put into the album”.
People got so used to “album” meaning an LP record (and its sleeve) that they might forget that an album is just an intentional collection of creative material, not necessarily a black circle inside of a cardboard square. 
So you have “way more than ten” items on your top ten list? 
mmm
I use the metric system.
1913 - Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring. Discovered around 1991, more thoroughly explored in 1999-2001. My parents loved Classical music but a very narrow part of it. For all practical purposes, it was classico-romantic works only, so roughly 1750-1900. My brother had a tape with Siouxie and the Banshees concert that started with this bit taken from the ballet. I was already familiar with it but it was the first time I learnt what it was. I decided that it was way more exciting than Mozart. I had the exact same thought when I listened to the whole work in my mid-20s : “Now, that’s my sound world”.
1913 - Debssuy - Syrinx. I saw it on TV in the mid-90s and was utterly fascinated, for pretty much the same reasons as with The Rite of Spring. Unfortunately, I almost immediately forgot who had written it, so that for years, I had a vague memory of a great piece for solo flute and that was it. Then, in 2004 I had a suspicion that it was by Debussy. It turned out to be correct and I started exploring his music. Voiles, from the Préludes for piano sealed the deal.
1957 - Sonny Rollins - Volume 2. In the mid-90s, my brother started listening to Jazz. I was intrigued but not totally won over. This album convinced me that it was a genre absolutely worth exploring. All tracks are exceptional.
1971 - David Bowie - Hunky Dory. At 21, I lived in London and had been familiar with some of Bowie’s best known songs for years. Around 2 am one night, at one of my professors’ home, someone played Life on Mars. Time froze. We replayed it immediately and then again and again non-stop for perhaps half an hour. It was a magical moment (the fact that a very pretty Italian classmate was sitting next to me with her head on my shoulder made it even better). The next day, I bought Changesbowie. Within a year, I had explored almost all of his back catalogue.
1978 - Kate Bush - The Kick Inside. I’m pretty sure I saw the video at a very young age, it came out when I was 3, and everything about it weirded me out : her voice, her dress, her moves, the lighting and most of all the music itself. It was the beginning of a lifelong passion for her work. I only discovered the album much later, in the mid-90s but I’ve loved it ever since.
1982 - Michael Jackson - Thriller. It was the first album I owned and Jackson was the first artist I followed, with all the naive obsession of first love (I even had a binder with pictures of him). Looking at the videos immediately takes me back to those days when my musical tastes were emerging.
1985 - Renaud - Mistral Gagnant. OK, this one is probably obscure here but Renaud was a major figure of French rock in the late 70s and 80s. When this album came out, I heard the single Miss Maggie and its irreverence and innovative use of slang absolutely cracked me up. I then bought the album and played it to death. And the title track remains quite simply the most beautifully wistful song about long-gone childhood.
1986 - Bon Jovi - Slippery when Wet. Yeah, laugh all you want but this album was what turned me to guitar-oriented music at age 12. I listened to it every single night for the best part of a year. Two years later, I was a headbanger, so I guess the seed had been sown…
1988 - Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. Actually, this one is arguable. I didn’t like it at all. I bought it after watching the video for the single Can I Pay with Madness ? which I loved. At age 13, I decided it was time I listened to some harder, grown-up stuff :D. It was too strong for me. However, I started listening to Metal very shortly after that. If the seed had been sown by Bon Jovi, Iron Maiden provided the fertile soil.
1989 - The Cure - Disintegration. I liked the singles that came out at the time but I was into metal then and it didn’t really fit in my soundscape. A year later, I was moving away from it and trying to discover new musical territories. I don’t really remember how I thought of The Cure but I was hooked very quickly and this album was the trigger. I raved about it to my first girlfriend when we started dating.
I saw this thread when it popped up yesterday and was intrigued, but needed some time to think about it.
Frame of reference: I was born in 1971.
1980: AC/DC - Back in Black (1980)
The first album I ever bought, it opened me up to rock music. I couldn’t get enough of it.
1982: Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman (1981)
I’d spent the next couple of years listening to some other rock, but a lot of top 40 stuff as well. Sometime around 6th or 7th grade I was gravitating more towards rock, and discovered Ozzy. I bought Blizzard of Ozz at the same time as this one, but Diary was the one that really spoke to me. I decided at this point to become a little metalhead.
1983: Rush - Signals (1982)
1983: Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (1975)
1983: Iron Maiden - Piece of Mind (1983)
As I got more into rock over the next couple of years, these three stand out as albums I really liked. I didn’t realize it at the time, but they are examples of my tastes gravitating more towards challenging, complex music, rather than plain rock like AC/DC, Ozzy, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I loved those bands too!
1986: Marillion - Misplaced Childhood (1985)
This is the one that changed everything. If I was ranking these albums in order of importance, it would be #1. I’d heard “Kayleigh” on the radio, and thought it was cool, but it quickly faded from public consciousness. Sometime later, a friend played the album on the sound system at my school’s planetarium where we worked, and I was blown away. I immediately went out and bought it, and decided I needed more of this type of music. And thus my life-long love affair with progressive rock was born.
1986: Genesis - Nursery Crime (1971)
1986: Yes - The Yes Album (1970)
1986: ELP - Brain Salad Surgery (1973)
These were some of the first prog albums I bought. I was familiar with “I’ve Seen All Good People,” “Starship Trooper,” “Roundabout,” “Still… You Turn Me On,” and “Karn Evil 9” from the radio, so I bought TYA, Fragile , and BSS. I chose Nursery Crime as my first “real” Genesis album because I’d heard “The Musical Box” on Stonetrek, a weekly prog radio show in the Bay Area.
1992: Dream Theater - Images and Words (1992)
Most of the prog I’d been listening to over the years was from the '70s; at the time, there was little new prog that wasn’t “neo.” I heard “Pull Me Under” on the radio, and was intrigued, so I bought the album. Damn, mixing metal and prog, who’d a thunk it? I wouldn’t really call them “prog-metal,” more like “prog leaning towards metal,” but they opened the door to a sub-genre of prog that I love to this day.
1956 - Elvis Presley: Elvis Presley (It all started here for rock & roll)
1961 - Robert Johnson: King of the Delta Blues Singers (the basis for bands like Led Zeppelin and others)
1965 - Bob Dylan: Bringing it All Back Home (Modern rock started here)
1967 - Beatles: Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Perhaps the beginning of pop)
1967 - Jimi Hendrix: Are You Experienced (How many guitarists point to this as their inspiration? Too many to count)
1967 - The Velvet Underground and Nico: The Velvet Underground and Nico (Not sure what to say about this except it is an important album in rock history)
1969 - Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin (Perhaps the quintessential rock band)
1972 - David Bowie: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (Another that inspired so many followers)
1973 - Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon (Not sure if they invented progressive rock but they perfected it with this…on the Billboard chart for 741 weeks from 1973 to 1988)
1977 - The Ramones: Rocket to Russia (I’d put them ahead of the Sex Pistols for popularizing punk rock)
Honorable mention:
1977 - Fleetwood Mac: Rumours (they didn’t invent pop rock but they perfected it with this album)
No time today to elaborate, 1st date is the date I discovered it, italicized one is the actual release date (if different)-I was born in 1962, note:
[then I went to a college with an awesome radio station, total free form, and discovered a bunch of stuff that the radio never played. The PF album below seems pretty apropros for all of that, conventional radio only ever played Money and We Don’t Need No Education, it seemed]
Yeah, Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Velvet Underground and Charles Mingus all belong on there too. Ten ain’t many…
Not a very distinguished list, maybe, but these are the albums that helped me break into popular music. I was afraid of kids my age and therefore afraid of the music they listened to. These were the albums that taught me it wasn’t scary (beginning with Weird Al when I was in second grade), then later (beginning with Surfacing) that some of it was even tailored to my taste.
Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd - 1972
The Wall by Pink Floyd - 1982
Like a Virgin by Madonna - 1984
Even Worse by Weird Al - 1986
Graceland by Paul Simon - 1986
Achtung Baby by U2 - 1991
Monster by REM - 1994
Surfacing by Sarah McLachlan - 1997
Play by Moby - 1999
Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars by Fatboy Slim - 2000
1967 - Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles
1969 - Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin
1973 - Quadrophenia, The Who
1986 - Slippery When Wet, Bon Jovi (I’m from New Jersey and grew up in the 80s…)
1991 - Use Your Illusion (I & II, cheating a bit), Guns & Roses
2003 - Elephant, The White Stripes
2004 - The College Dropout, Kanye West
2010 - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West
2013 - Random Access Memories, Daft Punk
2015 - To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick Lamar
My musical tastes are constantly growing and evolving, so I’m sure I’ll be adding more and more (and replacing some) as the years go on.
1977 - Cheap Trick - In Color
1977 - Genesis - Seconds Out
1979 - Pink Floyd - The Wall
1980 - RUSH - Permanent Waves
1980 - Yes - Drama
1981 - RUSH - Moving Pictures
1981 - RUSH - Exit Stage Left
1989 - The Dickies - Second Coming
1992 - **Face to Face **- Don’t Turn Away
1995 - Joe Satriani - Joe Satriani
From the progressive side:
1973 - Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
1971 - Yes - Fragile
1973 - Genesis - Selling England by the Pound
1969 - King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King
1975 - Camel - The Snow Goose
1976 - Rush - 2112
1971 - Caravan - In the Land of Grey and Pink
1972 - Gentle Giant - Octopus
1972 - PFM - Per un Amico
1979 - The Enid - Touch Me
1978 - Happy the Man - Crafty Hands
197?: Goofy Gold - K-tel Collection…First album my parents bought me as a little kid. Allie Oop, Purple People Eater, Monster Mash…all the good stuff
1980: Blondie - Autoamerican…First album I bought with my own allowance money
1984: Van Halen - 1984…My immersion into the metal years of my teens
1987: Pink Floyd - The Wall…My fall from heavy metal grace and into prog rock. Consumed everything prog related.
1987: Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies…sort of metal, sort of prog, all kinds of awesome
1988: Pink Floyd - Momentary Lapse of Reason…significant for being first CD format, this was the end of vinyl for me.
1989: Love and Rockets - Express…Expanding from old prog into what we called ‘alternative’ before the media had a label for it
1992: Hammerbox - Hammerbox…During the Seattle grunge heyday, they were the best band that sadly didn’t get the fame
2005: David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust…um, yeah, it took me this long to discover ‘that guy from Labyrinth’…shameface
2016: Darren Korb - Bastion…Recently has got me into video game soundtracks, this has been my primary gateway into new music recently.
The Police: Synchronicity - a landmark because it was the first album (of hundreds) that I bought for myself. I liked it (and still do) but never became a big fan.
Madness: Keep Moving and One Step Beyond - after being introduced to Madness by the couple of hits that did make it to US radio/video, I went on to discover these albums (which don’t sound all that much like each other or like most of what I was hearing on the radio) that became my favorites by the end of my high school years.
The Beatles: Abbey Road - I knew the Beatles from some of their songs, but this was my first Beatles album, and it (especially Side 2) gave me new appreciation for the Beatles and for what a rock album could be.
The Kinks are The Village Green Preservation Society - I already knew and liked The Kinks, but discovering this older album made me love them. It was a revelation that a rock/pop album, by a band that could actually rock pretty hard, could be this pastoral and quaint, yet brilliant.
Something Fierce: Completely Unglued - showed me that a “local band,” who played at my college, could produce an album as catchy and satisfying as any in my collection.
The Swirling Eddies: Outdoor Elvis - Over the years, the band Daniel Amos, and their alter egos the Swirling Eddies, changed their style and released albums that challenged me, landed outside of my original musical comfort zone, and ultimately grew on me quite a bit. This was just the first of theirs to do so.
Haydn: String Quartets, Opus 64, #4-6 - my token classical disc on this list. Classical music, of various eras and styles and subgenres, makes up a significant portion of my musical diet, but there aren’t really specific “landmark albums.” So I’m representing classical music on this list with an example of a CD that, when I first played it, made me think “I want more of this.”
Trip Shakespeare: Lulu - Nothing groundbreaking here, just a great pop album that makes me happy whenever I listen to it, from the sheer joy of musicmaking it conveys.
The Seventy-Sevens: Sticks and Stones - just a great collection of songs.
Interestingly, my list doesn’t have any overlap with any of the others posted so far, though if I expanded it beyond 10 it would (Ziggy Stardust came close).
1970 - Rolling Stones - Get Yer Ya-Yas Out
1971 - Mahavishnu Orchestra – The Inner Mounting Flame
1972 - Cream – Live Cream, Vol. II
1973 - Ten Years After – Recorded Live
1973 - John McLaughlin & Carlos Santana – Love, Devotion, Surrender
1974 - Frank Zappa – Apostrophe
1975 - Roy Buchanan – Live Stock
1976 - Led Zeppelin –* The Song Remains the Same* soundtrack
1978 - Otis Rush – So Many Roads
1980 – X – Los Angeles
Well I have in my attic a box with some albums. For instance the original cast recording of Oklahoma! Each song is on one side of a large 78rpm record, and each record is enclosed in a paper sheath, and the paper sheaths have holes in them so you can see the name of the song (or number, I guess you would say). These sheaths are in a binder so you can turn the pages with the records in them. It’s an album of related songs.
Now by the time of* The King and I* all the songs were on one long-play “album” but instead of an album it was just one record. But stilled called an album. Then it was on CDs, and now you just download it from somewhere, but it’s still called an album.
Agh! I have now completely lost the meaning of album in any sense and it just looks like a strange word that means nothing.
Ain’t he the guy who wrote “Tuesdays with Morrie”?
mmm
Can finally now, after hauling tons of shite out of my old apartment, give more details:
Both, along with Chicago and several other softer rocking artists, were my true first musical passions.
Intimately tied up with the Summer of Love I enjoyed with a long-lost love…
[already discussed]
After getting into several of the Prog classics in the wake of Floyd [the station in question played tons of it], such as Yes, Crimson, and Genesis, I got into New Wave and Post-Punk (Killing Joke, Cabaret Voltaire), but more as a dabbler than as someone truly into what I was hearing. Finding these two artists was like coming home, for a crazy lonely dreamer like myself.
A new college town this time and the nascent internet helped open up new musical avenues, tho like in the early 80’s I tried a lot of stuff which never stuck. People like to lump Ride into the shoegazers, but they were much harder rocking and more powerful than most s.g.'ers.
Again, came home. I am a sucker for brooding dramatic romanticism it seems…
Indeed. Instantly became my fave band, replacing The Church.