Pressing reset on an alternative scene that had gone stale and corporate by the turn of the millennium, The Strokes’ 2001 debut ‘Is This It’ remains singularly influential and important today.
Overlooked in 1971, Funkadelic’s P-funk masterwork ‘Maggot Brain’ is an influential colossus spanning contemporary artists in rock, soul and hip-hop.
Playing off the tension between punk energy and arty intellectualism, Mission Of Burma were one of American punk’s most visionary bands.
A quantum leap in the singer-songwriter paradigm, Joni Mitchell’s flawless essay on love, loss and regret ‘Blue’ remains hugely powerful.
Justin Vernon’s reinvention of Bon Iver as a full-band endeavour for its second album, replete with electronic washes, has been quietly but massively influential.
The Shins’ 2001 debut ‘Oh, Inverted World’ still stands as an influential archetype for 21st century American indie.
Recorded at the same time as its more illustrious sister album ‘Kid A’, 2001’s ‘Amnesiac’ showed Radiohead matching the scope of rock with the sonic possibilities offered by electronic music.
Analyzing a bitterly divided America in 1971, Marvin Gaye’s gorgeous soul suite ‘What’s Going On’ has a legacy that resonates well beyond music.
1981’s ‘Nightclubbing’ was the second of a quick-fire brace of releases that transformed Grace Jones’s image.
The last of their masterpieces, 1981’s ‘Computer World’ represented Kraftwerk’s perfection of form and content.