Depeche Mode-Violator. I like some other Depeche Mode songs but this is the only album I really like. I’ve surely listened to it 1000 times.
Nine Inch Nails-Pretty Hate Machine was the right album at the right time for me, but nothing else has ever clicked.
Sometimes artists just change. Leo Sayers first album is great, his next good, and then its Adult Contemporary hell.
Ok i have to include the muppet version
The first Def Leppard album, ‘On Through the Night’ was just good straight ahead NWOBHM to my ears.
The rest of them, while not bad as such, came off as more watered-down, more commercial sounding to me. When those I knew, people who disliked hard rock, started liking them, that was the final nail in the coffin.
Phish - “Rift”.
One day back in the 90s, I was driving home from work and this song came on the radio that immediately grabbed me. When I got home I sat in the garage listening to the rest of the song, then the next two the station played so I could hear them announce what the song was, which was “Rift”.
I didn’t run right out and buy it - in fact it was probably another year or more before I bought the CD. I played the hell out of that thing for months.
I’ve bought a couple other Phish albums but they were all just “meh” to me.
I have a number of albums that I thoroughly enjoy, but was satisfied with only one album by the group, including:
Breakfast In America – Supertramp
Boston – Boston
All Things Must Pass – George Harrison
Are You Experienced – Jimi Hendrix Experience
Over-Nite Sensation– Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention
Ashes Are Burning – Renaissance
I needed two albums by Cream before I was satisfied:
Wheels of Fire – Cream
Disraeli Gears– Cream
Led Zeppelin: first album.
The Who: Live At Leeds (and two tracks from Who’s Next).
Here’s more interesting info.
The record company heard the demos and wanted him to re-record it with a professional producer.
There was another producer named John Boylan. I have to give John enormous credit. Because I told him that the only way I was going to do this was if I could do it in my basement. I told him I was not going to LA and do it in some studio because I knew it wouldn’t work.
He was the chosen producer and he didn’t want to lose the deal, he told me to record it in my basement and then bring it to LA and we will mix it. So he said, “You do that and we will split the producer’s royalty.” I was ready to say ‘yes’ before he said he would split the producers royalty.
Whoa… this is THE soundtrack to my “coming of age”! Hippie “AOR” stations (and hippie friends playing me these albums) were the beginning of my teenage radicalization.
I’d add the first Doors album.
In The Court of the Crimson King…
Steve Miller Band’s Children of the Future (local psychedelic band with Boz Scaggs and Leo Sidran, before they went stadium rock).
And Jefferson Airplane’s Volunteers (I pretend they never sold out later…).