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[SoulPlaya]

What are some albums that made you a fan of a genre (or artist) that you never heard before, or weren't a fan of before?

The Beatles- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: Made me a fan of the Beatles, which I had previously dismissed. A few albums later, and the Beatles are my favorite musical act ever.

Black Sabbath-Paranoid: I never really listened to metal as I thought it was all growling satanist crap. Boy, how wrong I was. This album made me a fan of the genre.

Wu Tang-Enter the 36 Chambers: Helped me discover so much of hip hop that I just didn't know about.

Joe Budden-Mood Muzik 2: Essentially brought me back to hip hop when it first came out.

 

[Siyou]

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

Was young when I checked it out, loved the album.

 

[TheExodu5]

Emancipator

I realized that sampled music could be beautiful as well.

 

[spindashing]

Made me appreciate Funk + the electric guitar. RIP Eddie Hazel.

 

[wenis]

I don't remember to be honest... the constant shift in music I was exposed to growing up was the biggest boost to my feelings on music today.

One day was never the same as the next. I could be listening to some Glenn Gould with my mom, Sly and the Family Stone with my dad or some Wu Tang/Metallica with my cousin.

 

[seldead]

What burns never returns - Don Caballero

Changed how I thought a traditional rock ensemble could be played or sound. Listening to it will seriously blow your mind. Damon Che's masterful polyrhythmic drumming over Ian William's looped guitar tapping creates such an organic sound that none of the the bands 'math rock' contempories ever managed to match.

 

[HiResDes]

Sonic Youth's Goo - I like rock
Johnny Cash's American III - Oh country doesn't have to suck
Modest Mouse's Moon and Antarctica - I think I'm a hipster, I should listen to more indie stuff
Joy Division's Closer - Sad music is the best, post-punk is superior
My Bloody Valentine's Loveless - Shoegaze is the best
Wayne Shorter's Juju - Oh there are other great jazz artists besides Miles Davis
Colin Stetson's New History Warefare - Jazz is transcendent
GusGus's Arabian Horse - House music can be complex

 

[Witchfinder General]

Strapping Young Lad - City

This album redefined what I thought I knew about Heavy Metal when it was released in 1997. It wasn't just that it was faster and heavier than anything that I'd heard up to that point, rather it moved the goal-posts on what I thought were the limits dynamics and emotion, drenching the listener in a torrent of sound that had the reality-rending energy of a black hole ripping a star apart.

It is less music and more like having every atom in your body rearranged the wrong way.

Check out these tracks:

All Hail the New Flesh
Detox
Underneath the Waves

 

[which1spink]

Obviously:

 

[mooooose]

Wu-Tang Enter the 36 Chambers will be the white man's goto response for getting them into hip hop, guaranteed.

 

[brianjones]

 

[Onemic]

Hated rock for the most part until I got this album. Now that's half of what I listen to.

 

[Nert]

As a dumbass 14 year old that looked to things like MTV's "TRL" for new music suggestions, I was blown away when I first heard "Jesus Walks. " In addition to being well produced and fun to listen to, this album had a lot of depth and touched on topics that were completely foreign to me (not only in popular rap, but also in popular music, period). It eventually prompted me to discover a whole realm of music that plenty of other people were already enjoying, including artists like Talib Kweli, The Roots, Lupe Fiasco, Common, and so on.

 

[riskVSreward]

 

[agrajag]

Wu-Tang Enter the 36 Chambers will be the white man's goto response for getting them into hip hop, guaranteed.

guilty as charged.

also

 

[enzo_gt]

2001 got me into rap. I got bored of hip hop after a few years and The College Dropout pulled me back in permanently.

 

[fredrancour]

Black Sabbath- Paranoid: Gateway drug to metal.
Led Zepplin IV: gateway drug to most other rock.
Miles Davis-kind of blue: added diversity to my music listening
Mastodon- Leviathan: Cured me of my fear of harsher vocals

 

[J@hranimo]

So good. Hope they get together again and make a third album.

 

[XANDER CAGE]

I was already a fan of Blur, I already adored Hewlett and I was already a fan of De La Soul and a few of the other artists featured alongside Albarn on this album, but this really wowed me when it came out. Gorillaz was/is such an incredible supergroup/creative outlet for Albarn. I'm always wary of weird get-together "let's put on a show!" projects, but god damn.

 

[Fiftyeight]

Bitches Brew

 

[mavs]

On the second attempted listen I suddenly didn't care that I didn't know where in the hell she was going musically. That's a really helpful attitude to keep for a whole lot of music.

 

[acheron_xl]

I'm exactly the right age for this album to have changed everything.

 

[lexi]

Obviously:

This for me as well. This album not only changed my views on music, but changed my views on my life. It is the most surreal, intimate experience I've ever had with an album. My perceptions about the world were changed, my perception of who I was as a person changed, it was just the most intense, personal experience I've ever had with a piece of music.

 

[British Monsoon]

In chronological order, starting with the first album I purchased and running up to Floyd, who I regrettably only paid attention to this past year;

Guns 'n' Roses - Appetite for Destruction - this album seriously opened my ears to hard rock music when I heard it at about 7 years old. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3va-a8fLO3k

Iron Maiden - Somewhere in Time - and this was the moment that I realised I LOVE metal. It's not just the music though, but Bruce's wonderful lyrics, the whole concept of the album and the detailed artwork on the cover. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA1GzDj8yDE

Cypress Hill - Black Sunday - the first album that made me believe there was hip-hop out there that actually appealed to me, rather than the crap seen on TV. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVWEi4fSt1Q

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Second Helping - this album introduced me to Southern Rock and remains one of my all-time favourites today. Just an excellent album from start to finish. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZizpZYf5oE

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik - I loved the hell out of this album from the first listen, and more importantly it introduced me to John Frusciante, who thanks to his work with the Chili Peppers, but more thanks to his solo work, has become one of my biggest guitar playing inspirations. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRh4oEmtvyw

Bob Marley - Burnin' - I'm sure it's a total cliché to go to college, smoke a lot of weed and become infatuated with Bob Marley and reggae in general, but that's what happened thanks to this album. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za01QWLXisQ

Opeth - Still Life - this album was my gateway into more extreme metal and also into prog rock. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQtgvMZrOhk

Red Sparowes - At the Soundless Dawn - introduced me to post-rock, which I'm now a huge fan of. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2CZbxsKqK0

Bob Dylan - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan - my old man was a big Dylan fan, but I never really cared for him until I was older, and this was the album that led to me appreciating folk music and a lot of the stuff my father listens to. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D94eMsIR9go

Uyama Hiroto - A Son of the Sun - introduced me to chilled out, jazzy trip-hop/electronica. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFbkPWu6clM

Zola Jesus - Stridulum II - I have no idea what genre of music this falls under, only that it's entirely alien to the type of music I usually listen to. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM8fEP8FOqE

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon - yeah, I just discovered Floyd. Well, discovered is the wrong word. I always knew about them, I just chose to ignore them for some reason. Big mistake. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYiahoYfPGk

 

[Zionyx]

On the second attempted listen I suddenly didn't care that I didn't know where in the hell she was going musically. That's a really helpful attitude to keep for a whole lot of music.

Joanna Newsom made me love life again. I can't ever listen to music the same way.

 

[TangMeng]

Kid A got me into electronica and hipster music.


House of Balloons got me into RnB.

 

[CyReN]

 

[jtb]

College Dropout for me. Album was such an incredible breath of fresh air - great production, witty lyrics, tough subject matter, and, most of all, a real earnestness to the whole thing.

 

[outunderthestars]

The first records by Godspeed You Black Emporer and Sigur Ros opened up entirely new worlds of music for me.

 

[cozo]

what's an album grandpa

 

[zerotol]

changed my views in as much that it is pretty amazing one man with an acoustic guitar in a hotel room could have such a huge impact on music and that impact carried on for so long...

 

[xxczx]

capsule - PLAYER

specifically this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uI3CsXIE2A

Got me into the whole Japanese electronica genre, namely just anything by Nakata but there's other artists I like too and it's pretty much all I listen to now.

 

[seldead]

Bitches Brew

Good answer. I was listening to a lot of return to forever and mahavishnu orchestra before I got into fusion era Davis but there's no denying the effect it had on music.
In a silent way is another excellent album by him just before bitches brew that paved the way for jazz fusion as a genre.

 

[Recon]

Wu-Tang Enter the 36 Chambers will be the white man's goto response for getting them into hip hop, guaranteed.

Not really. Im white, E.1999 Eternal got me into hip hop, Illmatic cemented my love for the genre.

 

[Qasiel]

Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield

My Dad's favourite album, this was played a lot when I was very young, but I never really took much notice of it until I was much older and listened to it again after a long time. As progressive music goes, it is still as amazing today as ever and got me firmly into the realms of Prog-Metal (along with the likes of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, and Dream Theater's Scenes from a Memory).

 

[AzureSkies]

Dream Theater's Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence

The 42 minute 8 part title track named after the album opened me to the fact that there is many people who live a far worse off life with me, suffering from disorders that they had no control over in the slightest, it really brought me open so that I could see how the people who suffered from these problems weren't sick or twisted. The whole album's worth listening to just for the second disc, the first disc has some ideas such as The Great Debate relating to stem cell research but honestly it would've bombed without the second disc.


The songs: Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence (If you have the time, I'd recommend listening to it in it's entirety)
Solitary Shell


Pink Floyd's The Wall

The song: In the Flesh

The Wall is an amazing project by Roger Waters which completely changed my view on many things in life, especially with the song In The Flesh which shows how obsessed people can get with power and control that they turn into a completely different person. Change is possible, but most people redirect into their old ways, rebuilding the wall around themselves that they spent years bringing down.

Helloween's Chameleon

The songs: Giants
When the Sinner
I Don't Wanna Cry No More


Chameleon introduced me to many different genres of music that I wouldn't have been interested in. Originally planned as the band's last album, every song changes style like how a Chameleon changes colour, resulting in an incredibly fresh and ambitious project. It was badly received by fans at the time for not being metal but it showed how Helloween could even top their famous Keeper of the Seven Keys. It was the last album to feature vocalist Michael Kiske, who left in late 1993 due to conflicts with the band and drummer Ingo Schwichtenberg who sadly suffered from Schizophrenia and committed took his life in front of a train in 1995.

 

[cajunator]

Weezer blue album.
I learned that Weezer is the shit.

 

[Throavium]

 

[coldvein]

sage francis... personal journals.

 

[hipgnosis]

Pink Floyd - DSotM Made me realize albums can be pieces of art as an entity. Had never heard an album that flows together so well, it was a journey. This album kickstarted my passion for music.

Sgt. Peppers Showed me what is possible in pop music. Or showed me that there are no limits.

Daydream Nation Introduced me to noisepop. Blew my mind at what could be done with guitars.

Kid A The hybrid of rock and minimal electro was mindblowing. Have appreciated new genres I'd never even thought before after listening to this.

The Velvet Underground & Nico A raw and pure album. Songs don't need to be complex or overly produced to be impressive.

London Calling Realized what can be done with punk rock.

Man gotta stop here, realized my list would be endless. So much great albums that have changed my perception.

 

[cdyhybrid]

College Dropout is the one that immediately springs to mind. It ended up being the soundtrack to a trip to Japan in my senior year of high school, which in itself was a life-changing experience. That trip combined with that album changed me in ways that I can't really define - I just know I'm a different person after experiencing that.

Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. I could just lay on my bed with the lights off and listen to these for hours. Really taught me how to let music engulf me and fully experience it.

Led Zepplin IV. Amazing record, and along with some Sabbath stuff really got me into exploring older music and learning about the history of metal.

Not any particular album, but an amalgamation of Metallica's first four albums and S&M. The main reason I listen to music is because I feed off the energy of the music. Those albums helped me learn how to channel anger/sadness into energy to be used for positive purposes. I heard No Leaf Clover on the radio when I was young and didn't know who it was or what the song was called, but I know I liked it and I wanted more.

Massive Attack's Mezzanine and Daft Punk's Alive 2007 kind of led me into starting to explore electronic music.

10000 Days was what led me into exploring Tool and APC, and it kind of instilled in me a cynicism towards everyday life, and helps me deal with the ridiculousness that sometimes pops up in life by just laughing at it because it IS so ridiculous.

 

[theAntagonist]

Strapping Young Lad - City

This album redefined what I thought I knew about Heavy Metal when it was released in 1997. It wasn't just that it was faster and heavier than anything that I'd heard up to that point, rather it moved the goal-posts on what I thought were the limits dynamics and emotion, drenching the listener in a torrent of sound that had the reality-rending energy of a black hole ripping a star apart.

It is less music and more like having every atom in your body rearranged the wrong way.

Check out these tracks:

All Hail the New Flesh
Detox
Underneath the Waves

I actually first heard of Strapping Young Lad when I saw them live a few years ago. Needless to say, seeing them changed my life and that show blew me away. It was at Ozzfest '06 and they were only on the second stage, yet they were the band that left the biggest impact by far.

My life changed once again when I picked up City. This album defines my adolescence and is basically raw intensity/passion/hostility/aggression imbued onto one album. This album is the DEFINITIVE heavy metal album to me, and I still listen to it even though I don't listen to metal nearly as much as I used to.

Ever since these two things have happened, I've been a massive Devin Townsend fan and have even met the guy in person. Funny, even though I still love SYL, it was really more of the gateway into his solo material for me as I've come to enjoy his other stuff a bit more in recent years. Still, City is magnificent and one of my absolute favorite albums period.

 

[batbeg]

At 13 I told my brother, little punk that I was, to get me something off Drive Thru Records - ideally either The Starting Line or RX Bandits.

He chose correctly.

Instead of getting me some generic cookie cutter CD he got me RXBs excellent Progress, an album which at my young age seemed to push every boundary of the given limitations of the genre I thought it had to adhere to. It was something on an entirely different level, and thanks to my brother choosing correctly, I've enjoyed 10 years of them as my favorite band, and many new favorite cds with each release.

It didn't just change my life to having a favorite band, though. RX Bandit's pushed me to become musically creative and demanding, to listen to what was played, and love it. Then there's the fact that the vast majority of my favorite bands over the last ten years (Howards Alias, The Return, Sonic Boom Six, The Exit, No Comply, Tauntra, The Sound of Animals Fighting, and many many more) were only discovered through live shows or general associations to RXB. Fucking life-changer. In fact, "batbeg" = ...and the battle begun" tied with another of my favorite pieces of media from the time, "Batman Begins".

At 16 I was introduced to Sigur Ros my best friend (who showed me Glósóli from Takk...), and so later that day we went to the HMV where I bought () and Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven. I'd never before heard bands who played with the quiet/loud dynamic so much, who focused so much on gigantic crescendos of rock following slow and tempered melodies playing with eachother... Finding post-rock was just fucking awesome, basically, as I then found out about Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, Mum, The Album Leaf, El Ten Eleven, and many many more.

 

[Rubbish King]

This really drew me away from punk, i think its the first Chili Peppers album where they really found their identity, creating a genre nobody has been able to recreate. I can't tell you how but it has just redefined how i play, listen and even pick my music..

MY personal favourites from that album:

- Blood Sugar Sex Majik
- Suck My Kiss
- Under The Bridge

 

[batbeg]

London Calling Realized what can be done with punk rock.

Have to represent how this affected me too:

While RXB are and probably shall always be my favorite band, The Clash are the guys who took their limited punk tools and erected a monument to kicking ass, saying what needed to be said, and saying it louder and better than everyone else. FUCK YEAH CLASH

 

[Etrian Oddity]

 

[Staccat0]

Helped me get into music that was "fun"
Before this, asa teen, everything needed to be dark and cynical. Talking Heads Taught me that there was something ballsy and edgy about sometimes trying something funky and blatantly fun.

Reminded me why I love punk and showed me how it could transcend the boring "rules" or aggressive music.
Fun fact, I took a class on the history of popular music. The instructor was a classical music guy through and through. When we got to this album he was like, "y'know, if you aren't into rock music, maybe still give this a try. These guys were doing a lot of interesting stuff here..."
spoke volumes coming from an older guy who wasn't into this sort of music at all.

Years later, Argument by Fugazi did it again. I thought I was done with Punk and heavy music in general, but I love this album SOOOO much. One of the best of the decade. Got me writing music again.

Really got me into country in a serious way. Before this I thought only older country was interested in trying something different. Working thought Neko's catalogue ended my cynisism about country music.

First hip-hop album I ever loved. Not liked, but loved. Through the 90s I always appreciated hip-hop and bought most of the classics, but this album works for me as an album. I can listen to it from start to finish. I can dig the music. I can dig the lyrics.

I loved OKC and The Bends, but this helped me appreciate band sthat aren't afraid to take risks, changed the way I approached being someone's fan and more importantly got me into music with electronic beats and synths in a more serious way.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Sleater-Kinney - The Woods
The Beatles - Revolver
Nirvana - Nevermind
Weezer - Pinkerton
Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks (just because it's my favorite album)

 

[Axis]

opened up my mind to what hip hop...first listened around 1990-1991

brought me back into hip hop when i was convinced it was going to shit(had heard a ton of the underground releases from 97-00)


and the obligatory music just wouldn't be the same if not for this album:

first beatles album i ever heard...still love it

favorite album of all time...for obvious reasons ^_^

 

[Acid08]

Ah, middle school. Such a fucking ridiculously good album.

 

[Staccat0]

Lonesome crowded west

Ah, middle school. Such a fucking ridiculously good album.

I don't know how so many people were into good music in middle school. Maybe it's because I grew up in the country, but I was listening to fucking Korn and Limp Bizkit at that age (I mean, there was good stuff too but still....) and didn't hear about MM until I was out of high school when they blew up.

great album