My journey into adulthood... told through the albums that shaped my life

There was an activity on Facebook recently where you had to post the covers of 10 albums that made a difference to your life. It was an activity I loved because it reminded me of the role music has played in my life. The Facebook activity called for just posting the cover without saying why, but for me I loved the experience of thinking of why these albums meant so much to me. 

So here they are, along with why. Arranged more or less as per the chronology when it impacted me. In many ways I was amazed how the evolution of my musical tastes and the albums I loved mirrored my growing up, the journey from simplicity to complexity, from happiness to confusion, from a self contained universe to a life where the boundaries between the world and the self blurred and the challenges merged. It’s also interesting when I think about it, how I find that my life now is starting to journey back to simplicity, and so is my music...

1 ) Abbey Road - The Beatles. Because it made me fall in love with melody 

2 ) Bad - Michael Jackson. Because he was first artist which I discovered without my parents 

3 ) So Far - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Because for the first time, melody met complexity, both musically and lyrically 

4 ) Hysteria - Def Leppard. Because I discovered 80s hair rock! 

5 ) Rock n Roll Renegade - Rock Machine. Because I realised that Indians outside the North East could rock! 

6 ) The Black Album - Metallica/Use Your Illusions 1 and 2 - Guns n Roses. Because while I could have posted And Justice For All.. , Master of Puppets or Appetite For Destruction, this was the zenith of my teenage Rock/metal years. The noise was loud. The attitude bad ass. The lyrics hellraising. And still lots of hair. 

7 ) Ten - Pearl Jam. Because along with Nevermind, I knew from the first riff of the first song, that my music, my world and my life would never be the same again. 

8 ) Singles (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack). Because this felt like the Soundtrack of my life 

9 ) Achtung Baby - U2. Because no other album I had heard till then captured the sound of what was happening in the world. From techno and punk to the fall of the Berlin Wall to the new world emerging out of chaos. And because it was the first time I saw a band choose to walk away from its legacy and get even better. This was my Bob Dylan goes electric moment 

10 ) Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine. Because I realised that metal could be about collective protest and not just individual rebellion. 

11 ) OK Computer - Radiohead. Because it is the greatest album I have ever heard. Because even more than Achtung Baby it captured the sound of the world and how it felt, how technology and the internet created isolation and loneliness and confusion rather than bringing us closer. Because it’s fucking genius. And because it’s the greatest album ever made. 

12 ) Kid A - Radiohead. Because how do you move forward from the greatest album of all time? By changing our idea of rock, of music itself, and dragging it into the 21st century