A commercial juggernaut, Adele’s heartbreak epic ’21’ was seismic enough to instigate a sea change in the music industry.
Selling virtually nothing on release in 1970 but having a huge influence on freak folk, Vashti Bunyan’s beautiful debut album ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ turns 50.
A bold, creative blowout sprawling across a triple album, The Clash’s 1980 epic ‘Sandinista!’ demonstrated how broad punk’s church could be.
The album that fulfilled the promise of the original vision for the art of sampling, The Avalanches’ 2000 debut ‘Since I Left You’ is an expression of wonderment and infinite possibilities.
Kanye West’s endlessly eclectic and inventive magnum opus, 2010’s ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ continues to influence new artists and silence his critics a decade later.
Thought of as an outlier in their discography, 1970’s ‘Loaded’ speaks to the truth that, at heart, The Velvet Underground was a pop outfit.
A smorgasbord of hip-hop, psychedelia, soul and funk, Outkast’s fourth album ‘Stankonia’ presaged the genre-blind approach to music today.
The sound of youthful idealism hitting the reality of experience, Bruce Springsteen’s epic 1980 record ‘The River’ earns every minute of its double album status.
An entrancing hybrid of Western rock and African musical traditions that appealed to the soul as well as the brain, Talking Heads’ 1980 album ‘Remain In Light’ remains a beacon of inspiration.
Innovative in promotional terms as well as purely musical ones, it’s hard to remember a major label album as shocking and revolutionary as Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’.
