Einar

Everybody needs Joni in their lives, and Blue is simply a perfect album. There is something about Joni Mitchell that is impossible to copy. The songwriting is completely her own, and her singing, guitar playing, piano playing and dulcimer playing are all sublime. Everything sounds effortless, yet nobody else could have made this record. Beautiful, vulnerable, warm and heartbreaking. One of those rare albums where every single note feels exactly where it should be.

Just fantastic. The sheer inventiveness of Jane Doe is staggering, but what really gets me is how perfectly paced it is. For something this chaotic, violent and relentless, there isn’t a second that feels accidental. It’s brutally heavy, but there is so much going on underneath the surface. Every time I return to it, I seem to hear something new. And seriously, name a band with a more consistently great discography than Converge. I dare you.

The genius of His Purple Badness is undeniable, and I don’t think he ever shone more brightly than he does here. Sign O’ the Times is Prince at his most fearless and inventive. Funk, soul, rock, pop, psychedelia. He seems able to do absolutely anything, and somehow it all belongs together. There are very few artists where the word “genius” feels completely justified. Prince was one of them, and this is his masterpiece.

Conor Oberst is my age, and when this album came out it spoke to my adolescent self like almost nothing else did. Fevers and Mirrors has all the confusion, insecurity, anger, self-importance and heartbreak of being young, without ever feeling fake. At that age, it felt like someone was putting words to things I didn’t quite know how to express myself. For a teenager, this is pure gold. And even though I’m a long way from being that teenager now, I still love it.

I think this is the album I’ve listened to more than any other since it came out. I love Nick Cave, but The Boatman’s Call is, for me, his greatest achievement. I skipped school to buy it when I was 16, and it has stayed with me ever since. There are songs here that I must have heard hundreds of times, yet I never seem to tire of them. It’s quiet, intimate, sad and incredibly beautiful. An album that meant a lot to me at 16 and somehow means even more to me now.

My desert island album. I’ve loved Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness since the day it came out, and to me it is the sound of my teenage years. Almost thirty years later, I still listen to it all the time, and somehow it has never lost its power. It contains almost everything I love about music: huge guitars and quiet acoustic songs, anger and tenderness, beauty and noise, melancholy and pure excitement. It’s sprawling, excessive, imperfect and completely wonderful. I wouldn’t change a thing. If I could only take one album with me, this would be it.