Keys to Everything

Compared to some I’m a more recent convert to the church of music. When I was younger we couldn’t afford a CD player and therefore couldn’t buy CDs. When my Dad got a free walkman from his company when I was seven it revolutionised my life. We didn’t have much to play on it but what we did have I listened to to the point of wearing the discs smooth.

I’m a firm believer of the fact that any style of music can never go out of fashion – if you liked it at one point, going back to it four or five years later shouldn’t have changed much – and my friends know of my incredibly strong love of the 90s pop music we all grew up with, but everyone else is now “too grown up” for.

I couldn’t live without music.

And here are the fifteen albums that are the cause of this. (In no particular order and it was going to be ten, but I couldn’t resist the other five)
Some of them for being happy accidents, other artists were ‘passed down’ to me and others gave me a whole new frontier to explore…

 Amy Studt’s False Smiles was the first album I ever went into a store, picked up and payed for with my own money. These song hold many, many fond memories for me. I played this disc to death and I still love it to this day.
I don’t remember much about the reaction when it was released. I remember seeing Misfit on the TV a few times and falling in love with that song.
This was the first time I discovered how much music could relate to human experience. The songs are personal, but, for the most part, not self-indulgent and I’ve always enjoyed the lyrics. Because I love it so much False Smiles is the album I’ll never forget all the words to.

Keeping firmly within the realms of British music Employment was a present from my Dad to my sister when she finished her SATs. I stole it pretty soon after because of the ever classic I Predict A Riot.
The reason this is in this list is because it started my love affair with the Kaiser Chiefs. This is, in my mind, their best albums to date. It contains some of their best known tracks and it was the catalyst for my mad outburst in the middle of TESCOs when I saw their second album was on sale.
The album has a very distinct style, one that, if you don’t like it, you’re going to find boring. This is one album that expanded my horizons – it was part of a wave that helped my accept music beyond the pop stuff that I’d been listening to before.

Honestly The Silent Force would be here even if I hated most of it because of one song. Jillian (I’d Give My Heart) is so epic and Sharon den Adel’s vocals are so powerful that I would happily pay the full album price just for that song.
It’s a good thing that the rest of the tracks are just about up to the same standard. Before this I’d never even toyed with the notion of Symphonic Metal, by all accounts, as a musical genre, this should not work so well. But there is a high level of intelligence behind every song. Within Temptation are frequently compared to Evanescence but I’ve never agreed with that. Evanescence has a different sound, from the vocals to the production there are few similarities.
Listening to Within Temptation prompted me to check out other acts like Nightwish (similar but with a harder sound) and is another horizon expanding album.

Get The Picture? is actually representative of all Smash Mouth albums in this list. This is their most… pop sounding album but their style is recognisable in every track.
The only thing that really irritates me is the fact that I know no-one to whom I can say “Oh, I love Smash Mouth” without getting a “Who?” in response. And then I have to start talking about Shrek to get a semblance of recognition from the person. It’s such a shame because Smash Mouth are a truly fun group. There’s not a song I don’t like and if you don’t like one album, it’s quite likely that one of the others will suit you just fine.

The first Japanese album I ever got was Ayu’s (miss)understood. I think it’s still one of her best despite many of the tracks being Japanese language versions of Sweetbox songs.
Actually, no, they’re more than that. Ayumi puts her own stamp on them and makes them amazing.
Plus, it comes with a photobook that I’m slowly becoming good enough to read. (miss)understood was an impulse. I knew I liked the Ayu songs I’d heard, but that didn’t include any on this album, when I recieved this I think I about died from excitement