Razor-sharp, angry and intelligent, Gang Of Four’s 1979 debut album ‘Entertainment!’ was instrumental in laying down a template for post-punk that still endures today.
A magnum opus of masterful, conceptual songwriting spanning a bewildering number of genres, ’69 Love Songs’ by The Magnetic Fields has not been surpassed.
While synthesisers had been around for a while by 1979, Gary Numan’s chilly, immersive album ‘The Pleasure Principle’ represented a Year Zero for commercially successful electronic pop.
Four decades on from its release, The Slits’ scintillating debut album ‘Cut’ still blazes a trail for women in the music industry.
‘Grace’, the sole completed album by the iconic Jeff Buckley before his untimely death at the age of 30, still stands up as a universally relatable yet highly personal record.
Portishead may not have invented ‘trip hop’, but their endlessly cool and inventive 1994 debut album ‘Dummy’ came to define it completely.
Minimalist, crystalline and intimate, The xx’s debut album contains the DNA of a subsequent decade of brilliant pop.
Turning his neuroses inwards, David Byrne and Talking Heads delivered their first proper masterpiece in 1979 with third album ‘Fear Of Music’.
Derided at the time, Beastie Boys’ kaleidoscopic second album ‘Paul’s Boutique’ helped to turn sampling into a fine art form.
Presenting a fully formed 21st century pop icon to the world in the form of Florence Welch, ‘Lungs’ is one of the Noughties’ great debut albums.
