Here's the list:
- Tupac Shakur - All Eyez On Me
- Nirvana - Nevermind
- The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
- The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses
- The Strokes - Is This It
- Television - Marquee Moon
- The Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band
- Abba - Arrival
- Arcade Fire - The Neon Bible
- Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
- The Doors - LA Woman
- The Smiths - Meat Is Murder
- Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica
- Velvet Underground and Nico
Not all of these albums are worth defending (The Doors, Abba), and some of the commentors just about get it right as far as why some records are good without being as great as they are reputed to be (Beach Boys, The Strokes, The Smiths, Nirvana). But mostly they either completely mischaracterize what the albums are about, or just attack the album as a proxy for attacking other people who like the record, or people who told them that they should like the record.Tjinder Singh of the very mediocre Cornershop apparently has not heard anything from Pink Floyd other than "Money" (and therefore misses the point of the record overall. The theme of the record is Time and Mortality).
Ian Williams of Battles (a band I like) doesn't like the Strokes because they were "rich kids from uptown New York" unlike Ian Williams of Battles.
Alex Kapranos of the overrated Franz Ferdinand doesn't like Television because "people pontificate over the album." Darn those people and their pontificating.
Eddie Argos of the obscure yet overrated Art Brut dislikes The Stone Roses because:
They're totally overrated. Plus they covered Scarborough Fair. I don't understand why people still play their music in nightclubs - it makes me really angry. When I'm drunk in a club I usually end up arguing with the DJ who's playing them. The Stone Roses were an awful, awful band. They were uncharismatic, their lyrics are nonsensical and their music is dreary. Also, we have them to thank for Oasis, although at least Noel Gallagher is funny and Liam is a bit of a pop star. The Roses make me think of kids older than me swaggering around with bowl haircuts and affecting Manchester accents. It makes my skin crawl. And all their fans are so smug: "Oh, you don't understand it." I do understand it! It's ridiculous that it regularly gets voted in at the top of those "greatest British album ever" polls. They spawned a new thug-boy pop culture.So apparently he's the only kid in the history of the world to have been picked on in High School by thuggish faux-Manchunians. Darn those Stone Roses fans and their swaggering ways and bowl haircuts! It's like he grew up with the cast of A Clockwork Orange. No wonder he's so punk.
Anyway, musical taste is very personal and we don't like having other people push their tastes on us. We also don't like music from people we don't like to begin with. That's the reason I don't like Reggae, Jam bands, and the Grateful Dead to this day; all those annoying trustafarians and their dirty, dirty ways.
As for me, The Smiths, Pink Floyd, and the Stone Roses will probably be in my record collection forever.
