72. Judas Priest - Killing Machine / Hell Bent For Leather (Depending on where you live) (1979)
I was always a Judas Priest man rather than an Iron Maiden man and this album was one of the main reasons why.This album for me is the album that shoved metal into the 80s. I found most 70s metal bands to be kinda sludgy sounding & doom laden , even the Judas Priest albums that came before this one were like that.This was a turning point for me , the guitars were sharp & crisp sounding & the songs were fast and to me the whole thing sounded light years away from what most people were doing at the time ,Not to mention you also get an awesome Fleetwood Mac cover (Green Manalishi) and one of the best metal ballads ever written(Before the dawn).But ignoring those a lot of the material on this album was probably the template for thrash metal. Sadly because this album came out a good 4 or 5 years before they became hugely successful it tends to get overlooked in favour of their bigger selling albums , but this will always be my favourite Priest album.
Favourite songs Hell Bent For Leather , Green Manalishi (With The Two Pronged Crown) , Before The Dawn
71. Graham Coxon - Happiness In Magazines (2004)
FINALLY !!!!!!
This is the album i`ve been waiting Graham Coxon to knock out for about 7 years. It`s almost like when he was with Blur his solo albums wern`t really that important. His four solo albums before this were really hit & miss. But when he did hit , the songs were really good & it made you wish that he would do a whole album like that.Away from Blur he seems to have made a real effort on his solo stuff this time & thankfully it works. For me Graham Coxon is probably the most underrated guitarist ever , this album is nothing but pure rock , seriously the Foo Fighters would crawl over broken glass on their bellies naked to have songs so catchy that rock as hard as these do. I saw him play pretty much the whole album live, there was so much energy & vibrancy to the songs it was like being at a punk gig.
Favourite songs - Spectacular , Bittersweet Bundle Of Misery , Freakin Out
70. Soft Cell - Non Stop Erotic Cabaret (1981)
This as far as I am aware was the first album I ever owned. I was 5 or 6 years old & had just been given a little portable radio / cassette player for my birthday , and my mother said she`d buy a tape for me to listen to in it. At the time Tainted Love was a big favourite in our household so naturally I chose this. I loved it & for the next 5 or 6 years proceeded to wear the tape out.
Skip forward to 2 years ago , i`m doing a little music shopping & I see this album going for a quid. Feelings of nostaligia run over me & I decide to buy it. I look at the back to remind myself of the songs & I just laugh. Sex Dwarf , Seedy Films , Bedsitter... My mother let me listen to this as a kid for christ sake. I could only laugh that my mother would let her 5 year old little boy listen to songs about dwarves with spanking fetishes & people going to peep shows & being into bondage. This album is so disgusting I felt like I should have bought it wearing a plastic mac & put it in a brown paper bag when I left the shop.But I loved it then & I still love it & listening to it never fails to make me smile.
Favourite songs - Tainted Love , Sex Dwarf , Chips On My Shoulder
69. And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Madonna (1999)
I`d seen this lot mentioned by a lot of people I knew & with a name like that just assumed they were some kind of crappy death metal band. But then I found myself reading about them somewhere & saw them described as 'art punk' & comparisons to Sonic Youth`s Sister album , after that I was sold & went out & bought this. I seem to remember buying this & ATDI`s Relationship Of Command the same day (Due to someone telling me that if i was getting this I should get the other too)and to be fair it was quite a while before I listened to ADTI because I thought this was an amazing album. It just seemed to flow from one song to another & I listened to it the whole way through on it`s first listen (Something I rarely do).Some people might argue the 2 albums that came after this were better , but for me I found this the most accessable & I enjoy it a lot more than their other work.
Favourite songs - Mistakes & Regrets , Flood Of Red , Mark David Chapman