Thirty Most Influential Albums

Okay, I realize this is long and somewhere along the line it got out of control but if you don't want to read about each album it's fine. I know you spend 3/4 of your day on celebrity gossip blogs, fantasy sports advice sites, and scrolling through facebook photos of people you hate, but you really don't need to read this unless you really, really want. Make a day of it if that's what it takes. Or just look at the albums and tell me if you like any of them.

30. Newsboys - Take Me to Your Leader
Take Me to Your Leader and Breakfast were the most popular songs on this album - and they're great songs - but my favorites were Cup O' Tea and Lost the Plot. This was my favorite album for a time in middle school and I think if I heard it again it would still sound pretty good.

29. Charlie Daniels Band - Christmas Time Down South
This is the CD we listened to every year on the way to Missouri to see our family at Christmas. I never realized the line “Carolina, I hear you calling…” would be so true, but here I am. We listened to a lot of Charlie Daniels but this one had happier lyrics (with the birth of Christ and all) than the other stuff I remember…like the one about tying someone to a stump and letting the rattlers and the bugs and the alligators do the rest.

28. Audio Adrenaline – Bloom
This is the only CD I had from Audio Adrenaline and I think it might be partly because of their name. If you’re used to hearing it I guess it doesn’t sound that bad, but when you look at it for a while and think about the meaning of each word it really is a terrible band name. It’s the equivalent of person calling himself The Edge. Stupid. But anyway, Never Gonna Be as Big as Jesus and I Hear Jesus Calling were great songs, and I listened to this a lot.

27. Uncle Tupelo – March 16 - 20, 1992
I’d heard of Uncle Tupelo because of my love for Wilco, but had never actually heard them until I found this CD at a thrift store in college - which means I got the CD about ten years late. But I liked hearing young guys covering old songs and this album is timeless.

26. Wilco – Summerteeth
I only wanted to do one album from each artist for this list, but I’m pretty sure I realized how much I liked Ashley when she started singing She’s a Jar. So I think that counts as influential. And even though he was really annoying in that documentary, Wilco was a much better band when Jay Bennett was helping write and record the songs.

25.Tom T. Hall - In Search of a Song
This is the soundtrack of station wagons breaking down, driving past hog farms, sleeping in the back in the space between the luggage, being the first to see the Arch, and calling the window seat.

24. Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska
I’m not a big fan of the Boss (besides his guest appearance on Mathnet), but I love this album. It’s very stark, sounds homemade, and is full of small-town and poor people detail. It has a couple great murder ballads and I love the way the narrator addresses his listener as “Sir.”

23. The White Stripes - White Blood Cells
I was in a music store in a mall in Fort Wayne when Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground came on. I thought it was some ‘70’s band I’d never heard of so I asked the clerk about it. He told me who it was and said they were really good, so I bought it. I had a minor freak-out listening to it on the way home because I thought I heard Jack White say the N-word twice in the first line of the first song. I looked at the CD and it was called WHITE Blood Cells. The band was named The WHITE Stripes. Then I convinced myself I’d accidentally purchased some kind of weird white supremacist CD and oh no how will I ever explain this to Tembe’!? Thankfully, I was wrong, he was singing, “hear your lips make a sound,” so I got to continue loving this CD. (Listen to the sample on Amazon and you might be able to see how I made this mistake.)

22. Radiohead - OK Computer
I remember seeing this in Wal-Mart in high school and listening on one of those music listening thingys that hardly ever worked. I probably had no idea what to think of it at the time and bought it based on the sticker proclaiming it as one of the best of the year. From then on it was always handy in the console of the Beast. (This is also the only album on my list that I’ve never completely listened to from start to finish, but come on, has anyone ever listened to all of Fitter Happier?) I don’t spend enough time between headphones or driving by myself anymore to listen to much Radiohead, and my mood is probably better as a result.

21. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
I usually don’t like studio-y stuff (Queen didn’t make my list) but this is an exception. The songs are all really good and I used to love that one song where the women start singing really high and for awhile you can’t tell if it’s singing or instruments. This one spent a lot of time in Betsy Ross’s CD player.

20. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Greatest Hits
After we’d procrastinated for days on our Mammal Research Project for Mr. Franklin’s science class, Derek Noe, Tony Hobbs and I rewrote Free Fallin’ as Free Mammals. The other group presentations included pictures, video clips, and other boring stuff like research…ours included Derek and Tony on guitar and my off-key singing about a sperm whale. I don’t remember failing the class, so I guess it turned out okay.

19. Blind Melon - Self Titled
I always loved No Rain but really didn’t have any expectations for the rest of the CD. I could probably only tell you the name of a couple songs on this CD, but I know my favorites are numbers 2, 3, and the last one. I think this is one of the only albums I listened to the summer I worked at the Rec Center in Clay County, KY. It’s the soundtrack to driving fast on Kentucky curvy roads with the windows down because your AC doesn’t work and the volume all the way up because your Bronco II is so loud.

18. The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
I never became a huge Beatles fan, and I can’t help but think some of their music is kind of annoying. Yeah, I said it. But this is the album I bought to find out if I’d like them and it was all I listened to for a few months. I don’t like the weird instrument during the verse of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, but it’s hard to not love an album with so many classic songs.

17. Marcy Playground - Marcy Playground
This is one of the most underrated albums of the 90’s. Yeah, I assumed they were a one-hit wonder too, but somewhere along the line I got the album and I was wrong. I was trying to learn to play guitar at the time and the songs were simple enough for me to try to play (just let it hang on the B-minors). I remember getting a concerned look from my mom when she heard me singing One More Suicide, but I don’t think she listened long enough to realize the song is a report, not an endorsement.

16. The Mighty Ducks Soundtrack
This is the first tape I ever bought with my own money. I don’t think it ever left my Walkman. Tag Team, back again, check it to wreck it let’s begin, party on party people let me hear some noise, DC’s in the house jump jump for joy. Party over here, party over there, wave your hands in the air, shake your derriere. These three words when you’re getting busy: Whoomp! There it is, hit me. Or at least that’s how I remember it.

15. Old Crow Medicine Show – O.C.M.S.
This is another CD of young guys making old time music. Wagon Wheel is an instant classic, and We’re All in This Together isn’t far behind. I don't know why, but this CD was comforting to me when I was really worried about being defibrillated again. It’s a perfect mix of fast and slow and their other albums haven’t come close to this one.

14. Ricky Skaggs - Live in London/My Father’s Son
I’m cheating by having two albums here, but it’s the same album to me. These were two of our family favorites and we wore the tapes out in Chevy station wagons. I’ll never forget loudly singing Honey, Won’t You Open That Door in the bathroom outside the camp kitchen and then walking out to find Steve Callahan waiting to go in. I’m pretty sure later that day he painted a face on his stomach and pretended his belly button was whistling.

13. Lynyrd Skynyrd - Gold and Platinum
Besides Sweet Home Alabama and Freebird, I somehow managed to not hear (or at least not notice) any of this music until I was a pallbearer at a funeral. After the service, Simple Man came blasting on and it’s just one of those moments where you never forget the first time you hear a song. Anyway, I got the album and I still can’t believe how many great songs they wrote in the short time they were around. There’s nothing to skip on this double disc.

12. Collective Soul - Self Titled
In middle school, I spent a lot of time upstairs in my room, lying in front of my Aiwa CD player with a blank tape ready to go. I was trying to record December when it came on the radio and for the longest time I could only get bits and pieces of it. Then I borrowed the CD from someone at school and they became my favorite band for a couple years. (Okay, maybe they were tied with Hootie.)

11. Carole King – Tapestry
I think the Broecker’s introduced me to Carole King. Either way, I spent a lot of time with them driving around in their dad’s brown Astro van listening to this CD. I still can’t believe how much I enjoy listening to this, but when the Avett Brother’s covered (You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman everything seemed okay.

10. Bob Dylan - Greatest Hits Vol. II
My first Bob Dylan CD. I love all of it. My four favorites are Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, All I Really Want to Do, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, and It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.

9. Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison and San Quentin
I bought this in high school and it’s the reason I love Johnny Cash. The only part that bugged me was when he started talking to a guy in the crowd during a serious song. I think it was Dark as a Dungeon, but I can’t remember right now. My favorites are Jackson, Folsom Prison Blues, Cocaine Blues, Long Black Veil, and Wanted Man.

8. Hootie and the Blowfish - Cracked Rear View
For some reason I caught a lot of flack from my family for liking this band. It was a big topic of conversation at the lake one summer and my uncle had everyone calling them Howie and the Catfish. But come on, look up the track list and tell me this isn’t a great CD.

7. Tom T. Hall - Magnificent Music Machine
My dad introduced me to Tom T. Hall by playing him a lot when we were kids. I remember seeing the record cover (a goofy cartoon picture) and thinking this was a children’s album. I didn’t remember how good the music was until I bought the CD a couple years ago and fell in love with it again. It’s a bluegrass/country mix, but mostly it’s just great songs. When I found out Fox on the Run was a cover of a British rock band named Sweet, it made me love it even more.

6. The Avett Brothers - Four Thieves Gone
My brother, Paul, told me about this band I’d probably like and their song called Talk on Indolence. I already had the song on a Paste Music Sampler so I found it and was in awe of this banjo-based madness. I drove many miles through Illinois listening to this album and strained my neck more than once while headbangdriving with Josh and Mark. If you haven’t heard Talk on Indolence, look it up. If you haven’t heard The Avett Brothers, this wouldn't be a terrible place to start.

5. Weezer - The Blue Album
This album will always remind me of riding around curvy roads with variations of Chris, Katie, Brooke, Hope, Paul, and whoever else would fit in the brown Astro van – probably on the way to Richmond. It was always loud, it was always fun, and we always knew all the words. (Except the fast part in My Name is Jonas. I could never get that.)

4. Neil Young - Live Rust
This is one of the first Neil Young albums I bought. I can’t remember if I had Harvest first, but this one is half acoustic/half electric so it really has everything I like about Neil Young. (Sedan Delivery is the only song on this album that I didn’t like for awhile…then I realized it was kind of hilarious and now I like it.)

3. John Prine - Prime Prine
My first John Prine CD and I never looked back. Paul and I listened to this almost every day on the way to and from school or basketball practice. I think the lyric “drove an English teacher half insane” was especially meaningful to me at the time.

2.Wilco - Being There
I was trying to figure out what kind of music I liked in high school when I picked up this album and saw a sticker that said it was named one of the best albums of the year by Rolling Stone. I liked the looks of it and I got two CD’s for one low price so at the time I guess that was enough to make me spend a large percentage of my current net worth on a band I’d never heard of. It was worth it.

1. The Moldy Peaches - Self Titled
If all you ever listen to is perfect, made-in-the-studio music, writing a song yourself seems impossible. But if you listen to a teenager recording nonsense in his room with his former babysitter and some friends, and they make songs about lucky numbers and guys named Jorge Regula and steak for chicken, you start to remember that making music is supposed to be fun. I think it’s kind of like if you spend a lot of time reading Shakespeare, you forget that Dr. Seuss was actually a pretty cool guy too. This album was college, dating Ashley, singing in public, and writing a song. Some of it is painful, but that's how it goes.