My Top 10 Albums Of All Time

These are the albums that have defined the seasons in my life.

1. Surfer Rosa - Pixies

This is Hermanus in the mid-nineties, hungover at Eugene’s gran’s house at Hamewith. This is the porch at AB’s house in Sandbaai. This is swaying in a basement dancefloor at midnight, 1994, in some dodgy nightclub in the East City in Cape Town, after Sam and Geoff somehow persuaded the DJ to play The Pixies for my 21st birthday. This is a worn-out TDK cassette on a road-trip, three, five, eight, ten times in a row. This album inspired everyone from U2 to Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Springsteen and Radiohead and kicked off a decade of ‘Loud-Quiet-Loud’ song structures in rock music. And it contains my favourite song of all time:

2. Blue Album - Weezer

Every. single. song. is a winner on this album. Weezer somehow managed to make ‘nerd rock’ cool and touched the nerve of every outsider, every nobody, every outcast, at universities around the world. I recall ugly crying while listening to The World Has Turned And Left Me Here over and over during my first big break-up, around 1995. Also, Buddy Holly has to be one of the catchiest songs ever written in rock music:

3. Exodus - Bob Marley

Tough to choose a favourite Marley album, but this one would have to be it. This is Denmark, studying in Copenhagen and escaping to Christiana. This is driving to Durban on one stretch to visit Geoff. This is hanging out in Obz, high celings and wooden floors, contemplating the universe. From the hypnotic build-up of Natural Mystic to the driving rhythm of the title track, leading to a grand finale of two of the greatest love songs ever written, from Bob to humankind: One Love and Three Little Birds:

4. Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

For me, Dylan is shutting out the other side of my bedroom door in Wheelan Street, Newlands, avoiding the drunken craziness in my teenage home. This entire album reads like a soundtrack to the 20th Century: Blowin’ In The Wind, Girl from the North Country, Masters of War, A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall and Don't Think Twice, It's All Right. Sure, there may be more epochal albums by Bob Dylan, but this one - well, it was the album I used to listen to with my dad, along with Exodus above, when we lived in Montrose Avenue in the 80s. My dad was pretty cool, as dads go.

5. American Recordings I-IV - Johnny Cash

Probably cheating, as this is four albums in one, but I’m including it because I bought the box when it came out and always considered them as a single set. This is Cash’s masterpiece and I first listened to it at a time when I realised my marriage was failing. I was a big NIN guy, not really knowing who Johnny Cash was… and then I heard Cash’s cover of Hurt and it changed everything for me.

6. The Miseducation of - Lauryn Hill

I flippen’ loved the Fugees, and kinda blamed Lauryn Hill for the rumoured in-fighting between her and Wyclef Jean. Then she dropped this album, out the blue. At times nostalgic and misty-eyed, at times both sultry and feisty, Miseducation blew a hole right through the world R&B, hip-hop scene. This album is London 1999 for me. It’s travelling around Europe, creative expression and adventure. Lauryn Hill probably influenced more 2000s artists than any other. Lauryn singlehandedly redefined a genre and gave her successors permission to be cool, clever, sexy, personal and political - all at the same time.

6. The Score - Fugees

Of course, if you include Miseducation you have to include Score. The perfect predecessor to Lauryn’s breakout masterpiece, Score burst onto the scene with the most overplayed song in history Killing Me Softly, but don’t judge this perfect collection of grit, street smarts and IQ on one song. With Wyclef’s and Lauryn’s perfect treatment of No Woman No Cry, all is forgiven. I was a student when I heard this, and it turned me onto hip-hop in a big way.

7. So - Peter Gabriel

After collecting vinyl records from the age of seven, this was the first CD I ever bought when I was around 12 years old. This album sold a gazillion copies and clearly entrenched Peter Gabriel’s solo career outside of Genesis. Ok, call me sentimental, but I still tear up when I think of John Cusack holding a boombox over his head in Say Anything. In Your Eyes defined my heartfelt teenage years. I listened to that song like, a million times, as a kid and it’s still as strong as ever:

8. Reverence - Faithless

This album has dated a lil, but my heart rate still skips to a higher velocity upon hearing the opening of Insomnia. My mind is immediately taken back to a stage of my life that included reading Irvine Welsh books, monster nightclub raves, three-day missions with 500 people in secret outdoor locations, glo-stick weekends, house parties in Cape Town, Copenhagen and London and the early rumbles of the EDM movement. Tell me you don’t feel this:

9. Renegades - Rage Against The Machine

Tom Morello is my favourite guitarist of all time. He has created a full list of my best psych-up songs. This entire album is full of anthemic reworkings of old classics, designed to get your head nodding in the car and your fists clenching tighter. I hear this and I think of starting my business, fighting, failing, fighting - and then getting back up again and continuing. Try not to get angry with the Man and gritting your teeth while listening to Maggie’s Farm:

10. Siamese Dream - Smashing Pumpkins

Another era-defining album. Siamese Dream pretty much describes me trying to figure out an identity in my early twenties. It’s hard to choose between this album and Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness but Siamese Dream tips the vote because Today is one of the best songs ever written:

If you dig these and have similar memorable, memory-laden albums to suggest, ping my on my socials. I’m always keen to hear music blasts-from-the-past.