Green Day - American Idiot
Laugh all you want, but this is the album that got me interested in music for the first time. I was 15 when I heard it. Before then I literally didn't listen to music. I never listened to the radio, I never listened to CD's, and when I did hear any music, It was never by my choice and I always ignored it. I just found it uninteresting and irrelevant to my life. I was really into film, books, and videogames, but I just didn't like music. Then I heard this because of a cousin of mine, and I instantly fell in love with music from then on. In the two years or so since then, my musical taste has vastly improved. I've liked some pretty sh*t bands in that time (Nickelback, Bon Jovi, Linkin Park, etc.), but I'd say that my taste now is pretty good. I will always hold a special place in my heart for American Idiot, no matter how bad people may consider it to be.
Ennio Morricone - The Good, the Bad, and Bad and the Ugly
This was my first favorite soundtrack, and the starting point for an obsession of mine (film scores). I now own many film scores. It's still one of my favorite scores, with only the score to Koyaanisqatsi ahead in my mind. The music is beautiful.
Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs
This album pulled me out of the classic rock stage I was in for a year or so. It was the first non-classic rock/film score/occasional radio friendly album album I heard, and it helped to expand my musical taste in new directions. I still love it, and I always will.
Kanye West - Late Registration
I don't like Kanye West anymore, but it opened me up to rap. It was the first rap album I heard, and before then I was one of those idiots who completely discounted rap/hip-hop as a musical genre because I had only heard sh*t radio/ringtone/mtv rap artists.
Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison
I also used to be one of those idiots who completely discounted country as a interesting genre. Then I heard this. Now I love country, and it is one of my favorite genres.
Antonin Dvorak - New World Symphony
It got me interested in classical. Before hearing this, the only classical I listened to was Ride of the Valkyries, a few Beethoven pieces, and the 1812 Overture.
Jerry Lee Lewis - Live at the Star Club
I really love this album. Other than the fact that it's one of my all time favorites, it was the first album where I actually began paying attention to bit rate. The first time I heard it, it was a crappy rip under 100 kbps. I loved it, but I noticed it was pretty low sound quality, but I assumed that was due to an inferior recording. I looke dit up, and found out what bit rate meant. I listened to a 320 kbps version, and immediately noticed a difference. Since then , I've tried to get a high quality bit rate whenever I obtain an album. I can't tell the difference between FLAC and 320 kbps, so I don't bother with that, but I notice it if it's lower than 192 kbps.
Carl Stalling - The Carl Stalling Project: Music From Warner Bros. Cartoons 1936-1958
Probably the most obscure album that I own. It's the first album that I spent a long time searching for, and I see it as a defining point in my musical evolution. This is first time that I realized how important was too me. It was the first time I put a serious effort into obtaining music, as opposed to just searching for it and finding it a few seconds later. Also, I really like it.
Fela Kuti - Expensive ****
This album was the first foreign language album I listened to, and it opened a whole world of music up to me that I never had even given a second thought of before. Before this, I only listened to english-language music. I did listen to classical albums and film scores made by people who spoke foreign languages, but that's not really the same thing.
Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
My first album based on a recommendation from Musicbanter. I have heard and loved a lot of music that I wouldn't even know about based on threads on this site.
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