This Record Changed My Life IV

Marty Smiley | Channel [V] Presenter
Michael Jackson – HIStory

I was too young to watch and hear MJ’s rise to world domination as the King of Pop. So HIStory, when I was ten years old, was the best way for me to experience it. 15 tracks of his greatest hits, and 15 new tunes. A double-disc epic record. I became obsessed. Dad wouldn’t let me have the album cover inserts because I was completely fascinated by the images of him in all these extravagant outfits. In a lot of ways this was the first album that made me want to listen to more music because I discovered how music actually made me feel! HIStory made me wanna dance and sing, and even at that age, think about stuff I never had before… The rest is history… RIP MJ!

Jonti | Artist

Beastie Boys – Ill Communication

I only really got into Beastie Boys around Hello Nasty, but it was not long after that record came out that I really started to explore their back catalogue, and got my ears onto Ill Communication. This album completely changed my world, opened me up to so many new sounds and got me into exploring the art of sampling and instrumental hip hop. This led me to discover artists like DJ Shadow and J Dilla, which started my love for [Jonti’s American label] Stones Throw and really changed the way I write music.

Nick O’Byrne | General Manager, AIR
Pink Floyd – Atom Heart Mother

At the age of 14 I stopped walking past my friends houses on the way to school every day just so I could listen to the first side of Atom Heart Mother uninterrupted on my walkman. As far as I was concerned, listening to pompous horn arrangements segue into epic solos, organ arpeggios and choirs sing- ing gibberish lyrics for 23 minutes was more important than trivial things like friendship. I found this album in my Dad’s collection. It was way more interesting than his Eric Bogle collection. I was a 14-year-old who had only recently discovered rock music but had taken classical piano lessons for nine years. It was an amazing combination of both worlds. It sent me into a teenage of prog-rock idolatry. I even dedicated a section on my Year 12 yearbook to Pink Floyd and started appreciating Jethro Tull without a hint of irony. I listened to this album for the first time in maybe eight years while writing this piece and I still know absolutely every note. The less said about Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast, though, the better.

Joanna Cameron | Charts & Membership Manager, AIR
Good Charlotte – The Young and The Hopeless

As an awkward 12-year-old tomboy growing up in an all-girls school my year eight life consisted of me ‘finding myself’. I was at that age where I didn’t know if I could still get away with wearing a training bra and for some strange reason girls plucked their eyebrows?! Music-wise, I was lost in the hype of Eminem but still danced around to ‘90s pop bands. I didn’t know where I fit in until I came across Good Charlotte. Lyrics consisting of teenage angst with an overriding pop melody. I was happy, and sad and happy again. I was a teenager. This album changed me from a music listener in to a mu- sic fan. I was introduced to mosh pits. I would skip school to line up for concert tickets. I’d sit on band forums until 3 in the morning talking music. My friends were obsessed with boys. I was obsessed with finding new music. This music al- lowed me to be whoever I wanted to be. It also made me want to get lots of tattoos and piercings that my mum wasn’t very happy about…

Craig Schuftan | Author
Beck – Odelay

From Blood Sugar Sex Magic to Come Out and Play, the results of the rock-rap crossover prior to 1996 gave the impression that the white contribution to contemporary black music would be to add ‘real instruments’, as though hip hop groups used loops and samples because they couldn’t afford a band. For Beck Hansen, hip hop’s magpie approach to composition had always been part of the fun, and on Odelay, it became an essential means for him to say what he wanted to say about the ‘flux and chaos’ of living in a media-saturated world. Hearing it for the first time in 1996 was a considerable shock. Entire genres of music appeared and disappeared in a matter of seconds, the album put me in a place, but the place turned out to be nowhere, “a party, but without a specific location” as Beck himself put it. It was hard to keep up, but well worth the effort. I remember guy working the cash register at the HMV megastore gave me a little conspiratorial smile and the barest of nods as he handed this to me, one Thursday night in 1996. It didn’t take me long to understand why, although understanding the album itself is, I’m happy to say, something I’m still working on. Entertain Us!: The Rise and Fall of Alternative Rock in the Nineties is out now