100 Best Debut Albums of All Time

Coming out of New Zealand at just 16 years old, Ella Yelich-O’Connor nailed the pensive intensity of at the heart of the best coming-of-age music with her striking mumble-pop breakthrough. Lorde dropped memorable lines like “Maybe the Internet raised us/Or maybe people are jerks” and “We’re so happy even when we’re smiling out of fear,” over spartan, moody tracks that underscored her compelling sense of ambivalence about the glitzy pop world she was soon to take over. The sound cohered best on “Royals,” one of the 2010s best singles, which turned her little slice of teenage wasteland into the center of the universe.

Alex Chilton and Chris Bell were the Memphis whiz kids at the heart of Big Star. They mixed British pop finesse with all-American hard rock, from the surging “Feel” to the acoustic “Thirteen,” one of the most beautiful love songs ever written. Chilton, who had been a teenage star with the Box Tops, sang in a high, bright voice that bristled against jagged, ringing guitars. Big Star’s back-to-basics idealism didn’t sell many records in the progressive-rock-dominated early-Seventies but over the years they inspired artists such as the Replacements and R.E.M..

Most bands try to go for a hot new sound on their debut album. Devo did them all one better with a hot new philosophy – impressing the gospel of societal “devolution” on a Seventies America that definitely needed to hear it. Billing themselves as “suburban robots here to entertain corporate life forms,” they played tight, torrid music that contorted the assembly line pulse of their native Akron, Ohio on songs like “Jocko Homo,” “Uncontrollable Urge” and a version of “Satisfaction” that stripped the Stones original down to its corroded chassis.

Now this was one strange Brit-pop success story: Where were the fashion statements and model girlfriends? It turned out that all the Monkeys needed to conquer the world was scrappy, lager-fueled tunes about being young and bored in a bleak steel town. Alex Turner sang about waiting all week for Saturday night, only to strike out with the same local girls he bombed with last week. Thanks to Turner’s big bag of creaky melodies and the band’s snaggletoothed guitar attack, even America couldn’t resist pub-punk gems like the raging, sexy “I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor.” It’s the fastest selling debut album by a band in the history of the UK, quite an achievement if you consider their competition.

Recorded for $600 and released on the Seattle indie label Sub Pop, Nirvana’s debut demonstrated Kurt Cobain’s already fully-formed ability at mixing punk attack with metal sludge and humanizing nihilist indie rock. Songs like “School,” “Scoff,” and “Negative Creep” lash out violently from a world of complete isolation, with lurching rhythms and grizzly guitar chug. And on “About a Girl,” Cobain tapped into his love for the Beatles to show an early sign of the pop genius that would help Nirvana infiltrate and redefine rock in the Nineties.  

The title sounded like wishful thinking when Stefani Germanotta’s album arrived in August 2008 to a shrug from radio programmers and record-buyers. By the spring of 2009, though, Germanotta, aka Lady Gaga, was famous indeed. Gaga’s debut was a game-charger, making dark, booming dance-pop—buoyed by the almighty four-on-the-floor thump of Eurodisco—the dominant sound of the global charts. And it introduced the world to an outrageously plus-sized form of pop divadom—to a provocateur and fashion plate who treated the whole world as her red carpet. Those paparazzi she sang about weren’t just metaphorical, after all.

Loss, love, forced coming-of-age and fragile generational hope: Arcade Fire’s debut touched on all these themes as it defined the independent rock of the ’00s. The Montreal band made symphonic rock that truly rocked, using accordions and strings as central elements rather than merely as accessories, with a rhythm section that never let up. Songs like “Wake Up,” “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” and “Rebellion (Lies)” were simultaneously outsize and deeply personal, like the best pop. But for all its sad realism – “I like the peace in the backseat,” sings Régine Chassagne at the album’s end, knowing the sense of security is utterly false – this was music that still found solace, and purpose, in communal celebration.

The U.K. duo of Howard and Guy Lawrence were barely in their twenties when they released Settle, but it’s one of the best long-players in the history of dance music, a perfectly paced, stunningly confident album of classic house and U.K.-garage bangers that never lets up. They blast out of the gate with the five-alarm anthem “When a Fire Starts to Burn,” set up Sam Smith with the career-making “Latch,” and unfurl killer diva moments with singers Eliza Doolittle, Jessie Ware, and AlunaGeorge on “Confess to Me,” ingeniously translating the feeling of a sweaty night of dance-floor ecstasy right into your living room.

The ultimate Eighties synth-pop manifesto. Alison Moyet was the brash girl singer with the soul pipes. Vince Clarke was the keyboard geek punching the buttons. Together, they made an album full of club classics like “Situation,” “Too Pieces” and “Don’t Go,” along with “Midnight,” a torch ballad Smokey Robinson could have written for Dusty Springfield. Clarke had already tasted fame with Depeche Mode; he famously quit in a huff after they rejected “Only You,” which became Yaz’s first hit. He moved on to Erasure, Moyet to solo hits, but their short-lived partnership was the essence of sideways-haircut romance.

Before he became famous for all the wrong reasons, Pete Doherty led the Libertines to gutter-punk glory on the band’s 2002 debut. Produced by Mick Jones of the Clash, Up the Bracket (the title was British slang for a punch in the throat) was a blur of slurred harmonies, budget-guitar grime and songs that always seemed like they might disintegrate or careen off the tracks. It could have been a mess, but thanks to Doherty and Carl Barat’s giant stash of swishy, Kinksian hooks, the album was as off-handedly tuneful as it was trashy – music that felt like a slightly dodgy, ultimately thrilling night on the town.

A Canadian Afro-Jewish former teen television star who raps about the malaise of macking over dourly down-tempo ambient beats? It didn’t quite sound like the recipe for an instant hip-hop landmark (nor for a commercial blockbuster), but with his 2010 debut, Drake remade rap—and for that matter, pop—in his own woozy image. Thank Me Later was a classic album-album, built to be listened to straight through, with chief producers Noah “40” Shebib and Boi-1da providing a sustained mood of swank sluggishness, and Drake’s raps mixing bravado and blues—a party-hearty crown prince with a depressive side. Of course, he’s also a punchline champ: “I’m busy getting rich, I don’t want trouble/I made enough for two niggas, boy—stunt double.”

The blockbuster debut of the 21-year-old Whitney, a great pop singer with the voice of a great soul singer. She could do steamy R&B like “You Give Good Love,” she could do bubble-pop electro-boogie like “How Will I Know,” she could do Hollywood schlock like “The Greatest Love Of All.” And – this was the confusing part – she sang them all like they meant the same thing, which to her they did. Whitney had bigger triumphs ahead of her – she hit her creative peaks as a full-grown woman. But the vocal firepower of her debut changed the way pop voices emoted for the next 15 years.

Is there a more brilliantly icky – let alone unlikely hit-making – leadoff track in history than “Blister In The Sun”? A trio of Milwaukee nerds using little more than guitar, standup bass, and a snare drum, the Femmes did big-box string-band busker-pop years before Marcus Mumford was a rumble in his parents’ pants. And they did it with a wickedly tragic sense of humor. When Gordon Gano whines “Why can’t I get just one fuck?!” on “Add It Up,” you hear the voice of every pimply, frustrated teenage dude since time began. Unsurprisingly, it (eventually) went platinum.

Lauper’s first band had broken up, she had filed for bankruptcy, and she was singing in a Japanese restaurant. Then this debut album of exuberant, razor-sharp dance pop became the first by a female performer to score four Top Five hits, including ”Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and “Time After Time.” The Queens-bred singer looked like a punked up Betty Boop and her sound was admirably elastic – from here cover of Prince’s “When You Were Mine” to the reggae tinged “Witness” to an amazing take on the Brains’ “Money Changes Everything,” which sounds at once like a pissed off song about careerist jerks and a anthem of pure now’s-my-time ambition.

So what if they were from Vegas, not the U.K., and the year was 2004, not 1983? The Killers were determined to be Duran Duran anyway. Hot Fuss was a blast of irresistible synth grooves and lyrics about sex, dancing, jealousy and gender-bending, delivered by Brandon Flowers in the world’s greatest bad British accent. “All These Things That I’ve Done” was the roof-raiser, building to the magnificently dippy chorus, “I got soul but I’m not a soldier!” “Mr. Brightside” and “Smile Like You Mean It” will always sound great in sleazy rock bars at 2 A.M. Best line: “I take my twist with a shout.”

In England in the early Seventies, there was nerdy art-rock and sexy glam-rock and rarely did the twain meet. Until this record, that is. Roxy Music mixed future-shock experimentalism in the form of Brian Eno‘s synth-doodles with Old-world charm in the form of Bryan Ferry’s tuxedoed croon. “2HB,” an ode to Humphrey Bogart, looked back to the grace of vintage Hollywood, while the storming electro-glitz of “Virginia Plain” proved they could write wham-bam hits and translucent cyber-rock like “Ladytron” laid the cloud-car highway to Radiohead and beyond.

When Trent Reznor made Pretty Hate Machine, he was just another New Wave synth dork who failed to hit the big time during the Eighties gold rush. His big claim to fame was playing back-up to Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett in the flop flick Light of Day. But in his studio fantasies, he became an industrial demon lord, barking commands over mechanical stun-beats: “Bow down before the one you serve / You’re gonna get what you deserve!” With “Head Like a Hole,” “Terrible Lie” and “Kinda I Want To,” Reznor was the king of the goth dance floor.

Check out that awesome band picture on the back cover – these guys looked nothing like Eighties rock stars. Instead, they looked like four shaggy headbanger kids with nothing going for them except the fervor of true believers. Yet that was enough to change the world. Metallica might have taken inspiration from U.K. bands like Iron Maiden or Diamond Head, but they channeled it all into something new and distinctive, in the speedy thrash riffs of “Hit the Lights – and that’s exactly what it sounds like.

When it came out, Weezer’s debut was merely a cool, quirky power-pop album with a couple of hit singles: “Buddy Holly” and “Undone (The Sweater Song).” But Rivers Cuomo’s band became a major influence the young sad-sack punkers who today claim Weezer as one of emo’s pioneers. Mixing winking deadpan delivery with serious hooks, guarded sensitivity and a deep disinterest in alt-rock’s then-roiling culture wars, they came up with a record that’s aged much better than a lot of the serious indie-rock of the time – denizens of which dismissed the Weez as a bad, major-label joke. Well, who’s smirking now?

“Could you make it with Frankenstein?” these glammed-out proto-punks asked, not kidding at all, baby. Produced by Todd Rundgren, the fast, cheap and out of control New York Dolls cooked down the Stones’ decadent blues, the Crystals’ street-tough sassiness and the Velvet Underground‘s torrid noise into songs like “Personality Crisis,” “Trash” and “Bad Girl.” They dressed like hookers but they single-bootedly kicked low-life New York swagger into a new era, with a hunger and intensity that no British glitter-rock prima donna could match. Rock still hasn’t gotten over it.

Kacey Musgraves’ considerable songwriting talent was rightly the focal point of her Grammy-winning 2013 debut for Mercury Nashville. She showed off dazzling wordplay in the bleak lead single, “Merry Go ‘Round,” fired poison darts in “Step Off,” and played inscrutable on the aching “It Is What It Is,” filling them all with melodies as memorable as her witty turns of phrase. But it was “Follow Your Arrow,” written with Shane McAnally and Brandy Clark, that got all the attention for its upbeat praise of weed smoke and same-sex love. Nearly a decade on, it’s still one of her most signature songs and a watershed moment for queer themes in country music

Sexual frustration, long sighs, an Oscar Wilde fetish, the Velvets and Stones and girl groups and movie worship – it’s all there on the Smiths’ insanely original debut. The groundbreaking sound was equal parts Morrissey‘s morose wit and Johnny Marr’s guitar chime. Moz trudges through England’s cheerless marshes in “Still Ill” and “This Charming Man” and sings about child murder on Suffer Little Children” He was a whole new kind of rock star (one who sang things like “For the good life is out there somewhere/ So stay on my arm, you little charmer/ But I know my luck too well”), and he transformed the iconography of UK pop forever.

Yes, Lil Kim’s biggest album is highly sexual. Famously, she kicks off the album by rapping on “Big Momma Thing,” “I used to be scared of the dick/Now I throw lips to the shit.” But there’s a playful quality, too. When one of her Junior M.A.F.I.A. crew says the word “anal” on the “Take It” skit, he can’t help but start laughing. And Lil Kim paints a deliberately outrageous image. On “Spend a Little Doe,” she murders a boyfriend who didn’t support her in prison while both are in bed naked. A larger-than-life icon, Kim’s artistic triumph has inspired rappers to the present day, for better or worse. Few have reached the same aesthetic heights as the self-proclaimed Queen Bee.

“London calling, speak the slang now,” crowed Anglo-Sri Lankan rapper Maya Arulpragasam, and no one could begrudge her the Clash reference. Arular was the sound of punk and agitprop meeting the 21st century – a protest march, a street riot, and a carnival, conducted over rousingly rackety beats.  The production, by M.I.A. and her then-beau Diplo, recast hip-hop as low-fi global party music. But it’s M.I.A. who commands the spotlight, whether flirting (“My finger tips and the lips/Do the work, yeah/My hips do the flicks), sloganeering (“Pull up the people, pull up the poor”), needling (“You can be a follower but who’s your leader?”), or talking glorious nonsense: “Purple Haze/Galang a lang a lang lang.”

Unlike most of his peers, Prine spent his debut largely avoiding his own troubles and instead focusing on acutely drawn characters who had bigger issues of their own. This career-making launch brought us the drug-addicted veteran in “Sam Stone,” the regret-burdened female narrator of “Angel from Montgomery,” the lonely “Donald and Lydia” who make love “from ten miles way,” the devastated senior in “Hello in There,” and the pre-MAGA type who puts so many flag stickers on his windshield that he crashes and dies (“Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore”). Enhanced by Prine’s wry, prematurely wise delivery and melodies stepped in honky-tonk and Appalachian music, John Prine is nothing less than a short-story collection you can sing along with.

Produced by Ray Manzarek of the Doors, this is the first great West Coast punk album. Searing songs fly off like sparks, including a zippy cover of the Doors’ “Soul Kitchen,” opener “Your Phones Off the Hook but You’re not” and the torrid, William S.  Burroughs-influenced “Johnny Hit and Run Paulene,” all propelled by guitarist Billy Zoom’s rockabilly flash, D.J. Bonebrake’s drums and John Doe and Exene Cervenka’s cat-scratch harmonies and street-poet vibe. One song title perfectly sums up their scrawled message: “The World’s A Mess, It’s In My Kiss.”

Jonathan Richman moved from Boston to New York as a teenager in hopes of sleeping on Lou Reed‘s couch. That influence shows on the two-chord anthem “Roadrunner.” Recorded in 1972 but not released until 1976, Lovers turned the tough sounds of the Velvet Underground into an ode to suburban romanticism, pure love, parents, the Fifties and all kinds of other things were that were totally uncool in the early Seventies. “[Rock] wasn’t about drugs and space,” he said years later. “It was about sex and boyfriends and girlfriends and stuff.”

“I’m full of dust and guitars,” Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett told Rolling Stone. Here’s what that sounded like. The band’s debut is all playful, psychedelic imagery and acid guitars. “Astronomy Domine” shows the group’s pop side; “The Gnome” gets high on observations like “look at the sky/Look at the river/Isn’t it goooood“; “Interstellar Overdrive” is a orgiastic guitar freakout that still leaves a burning sensation in the back of your brain. Barrett’s vision of psychedelia was blues-free, a huge innovation in late-Sixties England, and his genius-freak persona has been a chimeric lodestar for scads of trippy shut-ins.

James Murphy’s DFA label gave the early-2000s New York music scene a jolt of energy. On LCD Soundsystem’s debut, he combined dance-punk, hip-hop, and house music, and mixed in his own acerbic sense of humor for a funky, hilarious good time. LCD wore their influences with a hey-whatever shrug (see the Talking Heads rip-off “Disco Infiltrator”), as Murphy played the self-loathing hipster surveying the scene (“a movement, without the bother of all of the meaning,” he noted on “Movement”). But they also knew how to kick out a jam (“Daft Punk Is Playing at My House”). Their debut also came with a second CD of goodies, including their name-dropping masterpiece “Losing My Edge.”

When their debut came out, Pearl Jam were competing with Nirvana in a grunge popularity contest they were bound to lose. Yet Ten is a near-perfect record: Eddie Vedder’s shaky, agonized growl and Mike McCready’s wailing guitar solos on “Alive” and “Jeremy” push both songs to the brink and back again. Where Nirvana proposed a violent broke with classic rock, Pearl Jam worked in the tradition of the Who, giving estranged, forgotten Gen X refugees the arena-stage they deserved. Their influence has been incalculable and – Creed notwithstanding – pretty great.

Scottish boys with amazing hair, terrible skin, leather pants and black shirts buttoned up to the neck surfing a wave of gloom and enjoying every moment of it. The Mary Chain’s debut is a decadent masterpiece of bubblegum pop drowned in feedback (see “Just Like Honey,” “My Little Underground” and “Never Understand”). Psychocandy proved a massive influence on both sides of the pond, inspiring shoegaze in England and the noisy strain of indie pop in the States. Bands such as The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and albums such as My Bloody Valentine‘s noise-on-noise masterstroke Loveless are impossible to imagine without this album’s jet engine mope.

While the hippies huffed flower power in 1970, this Birmingham crew preferred sulfuric fumes. The album that arguably invented heavy metal was built on thunderous blues-rock – see “The Wizard,” which suggested the same juke-joint Lord Of The Rings obsession Led Zeppelin had. But the title track, with its famously downtuned Tony Iommi riffage, would define the sound of a thousand bands. And by the time Ozzy Osbourne sings “my name is Lucifer, please take my hand” on “N.I.B.” it was hard not to feel pulled over to the dark side yourself.

Unlikely DJ savior Josh Davis nearly did for the turntable what Hendrix did for the guitar – bringing vibrant technical brilliance, wild beauty and multifaceted musical texture to an instrument some rock Luddites still didn’t even consider to be an instrument at all. He came out of the Mo Wax trip-hop scene but tracks like “Permanent Slump” and “Changeling” had more in common with the spaced psychedelic rock explorations than they did with whatever DJ Krush was up to. But the rich, crackling beats themselves – culled from countless records discovered over a lifetime of crate digging – reminded everyone what was fun and free about hip-hop.

Blessed with impressive pedigree (he was the son of the Sixties folk-pop icon Tim Buckley) and a voice of great range and deep character, Jeff Buckley was cursed with a perfectionist’s streak. Buckley had scrapped one stab at a second album and was gearing up to start over when he drowned in a freak accident in Memphis in May 1997, leaving Grace as the only studio album completed to his satisfaction in his brief lifetime. But it is a rich legacy: the transportive blend of serpentine guitars and Buckley’s melismatic singing in “Mojo Pin” and “Grace”; the garage-band swagger and velvet pathos of “Last Goodbye” and “So Real”; the way Buckley turns Leonard Cohen‘s “Hallelujah” into delicate, personal prayer.

Sade Adu wrote her first song on the back of an unpaid bill, while walking home in the rain, after taking the bus from work. The title? “How Am I Going to Make a Living?” The Nigerian-born chanteuse and her London band made a chic entrance with Diamond Life, a New Wave glam-pop hit steeped in the Bowie-Roxy Music aesthetic of the 1980s New Romantic scene. Sade brought her elegantly soulful voice to “Smooth Operator” and “Your Love Is King.” As she said, “All the songs I’ve ever loved — even jazz stuff — are things that tell a story.”

With a guitar fire-storm that raged like primo Stones, this Manchester crew declared their intent on “Rock ‘N’ Roll Star,” a bold declaration released amid alt-rock’s cult-of-the-anti-star culture, and only months after Kurt Cobain‘s suicide. All bluster, bravado and borrowed Beatle-isms (not to mention Bowie and T-Rex bites), it soars from hook to juicy hook. And when Liam’s snarl slips up into falsetto for the titular line of “Live Forever,” it’s clear that – on record, anyway – that this crew would.

Costello on the fuel for his debut: “I spent a lot of time with just a big jar of instant coffee and the first Clash album, listening to it over and over.” The music doesn’t have the savage attack of the Clash – it’s more pub rock than punk rock – but the songs are full of punk’s verbal bite, particularly “Waiting for the End of the World” (“Dear Lord, I sincerely hope you’re coming/’Cause you really started something”). The album’s opening lines – “Now that your picture’s in the paper being rhythmically admired” – and the poisoned-valentine ballad “Alison” established Costello as one of the sharpest, and nastiest, lyricists of his generation. He pretty much reinvented the Dylan-esque singer-songwriter in his own nerd-avenger image.

This was the start of gangsta rap as well as the launching pad for the careers of Ice Cube, Eazy-E and Dr. Dre. While Public Enemy were hip-hop’s political revolutionaries, N.W.A. celebrated the thug life. (A collection of Dre-produced tracks for N.W.A. and other artists had been released in 1987 under the name N.W.A. and the Posse, but this was their first real album.) “Do I look like a motherfucking role model?” Ice Cube asks on “Gangsta Gangsta”: “To a kid looking up to me, life ain’t nothing but bitches and money.” Ice Cube’s rage, combined with Dr. Dre’s police-siren street beats, combined for a truly fearsome sound on “Express Yourself,” “A Bitch Iz a Bitch” and “Straight Outta Compton.” But it was the protest “Fuck Tha Police” that earned the crew its biggest honor: a threatening letter from the FBI.

Wire were the sharpest, most inventive malcontents in the UK punk class of ’77, knocking out two-chord blasts of primal blurt that made the Sex Pistols sound like Traffic. Pink Flag seemed to reimagine rock itself from the basement up — from the surging, war-torn “Reuters” to the static-cling power-pop of “Ex Lion Tamer” and the lovely, skeletal romanticism of “Fragile.” It became one of the most influential indie-rock albums ever and one of the most covered records of all time — Minor Threat and Elastica did “12XU,” R.E.M. did “Strange,” Spoon did “Lowdown,” the New Bomb Turks did “Mr. Suit,” fIREHOSE did “Mannequin” and on and on.

Mary J. Blige and producer Sean “Puffy” Combs built a platinum-plated bridge between the then disparate worlds of hip-hop and R&B, earning her the undisputed title “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul.” Blige was as tough as a rapper but smooth and sweet like an old-school diva and on inviting but rugged songs like “Real Love” and “Reminisce” she imbued a streetwise elegance that brought a fine new realism to R&B. What’s the 411? was just as much as important in its own right as Illmatic or Ready To Die, laying the groundwork for independent women like Lauryn Hill and Beyoncé.

The most popular girl group of the New Wave surfed to the top of the charts with this hooky debut. Everyone knows “We Got the Beat” and “Our Lips Our Sealed,” exuberant songs that livened up the Top Forty, but the entire album welds punkish spirit to party-minded pop – from the L.A. anthem “This Town” to splashy power-pop like “Skidmarks on My Heart” and “Can’t Stop The World.” It’s a beachscape of catty girls and pretty boys, and an image of Southern California that’s just as indelible as anything by the Eagles or Doors.

“I believe in this band’s ability to bridge the gap between entertainment and activism,” declared Zack de la Rocha, whose radical politics found sympathetic muscle in Tom Morello’s howling one-guitar army. On songs like “Killing in the Name” and “Bullet in the Head” Morello’s effects-soaked guitar sounded like a DJ scratch, an air raid siren and Led Zeppelin all at once and hardcore punk vet de la Rocha’s righteous voice was louder than a bomb: “They say jump/ you say how high” They spawned a million rap-rock imitators but blaming them for Limp Bizkit it like blaming sunshine for garden weeds.

The Slits blasted out of the London punk explosion of 1977 as a band of rebellious city girls determined to make their own kind of noise. On the cover of Cut, they stand defiant as three mud-spattered primitive warriors in loincloths. They combine reggae skank and arty rage in anarchic blurts like “Shoplifting” (“We pay fuck-all!”) and “Typical Girls.” The Slits loved to antagonize the male-dominated rock scene — as guitarist Viv Albertine wrote, “Many guys at the time didn’t know whether they wanted to kill us or fuck us.” But Cut has always kept inspiring generations of feminist punks.

In November 1955, RCA Records bought Presley’s contract, singles and unreleased master tapes from Sun Records for $35,000. His first full-length album came out six months later, with tracks drawn from both the Sun sessions and from further recording at RCA’s studios in New York and Nashville. “There wasn’t any pressure,” guitarist Scotty Moore said of the first RCA sessions. “They were just bigger studios with different equipment. We basically just went in and did the same thing we always did.” On tracks such as “Blue Suede Shoes,” that meant revved-up country music with the sexiest voice anyone had ever heard.

Fueled by “a little marijuana and a lotta alienation,” the Stooges gave the lie to hippie idealism, playing with a savagery that unsettled even the most blasé clubgoers. The band was signed to Elektra, despite label head Jac Holzman’s misgivings that “the Stooges could barely play their instruments. How were we going to get this on record?” Ex-Velvet Underground member John Cale produced a primitive debut wherein, amid Ron Asheton’s wah-wah blurts, Iggy Stooge (né James Osterberg) snarled seminal punk classics such as “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “No Fun” and “1969.” The record stiffed, but it undeniably gave birth to punk rock.

From the git-go, these shaggy folks from deepest Jacksonville, Florida played hard, lived harder and shot from the hip, all three guitars blazing in music that blew past the Mason-Dixon line to become America’s next top boogie-rock. Discovered and produced by from essential mid-Sixties Dylan sideman Al Kooper, Skynyrd offered taut rockers including “Poison Whiskey” and the perpetual lighter (well, now iPhone) waving anthem “Freebird.” Perhaps the ultimate Southern rock band and this record aged shockingly well; just ask the Drive-By Truckers.

Ladies and gentlemen, Karen O! The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ debut introduced the world outside New York to the beer-swilling frontwoman, who sounded like she’d eaten Pat Benatar for breakfast while rocking out to Siouxsie and the Banshees. The gorgeous ballad “Maps” was the surprise hit, but most of the album found O spitting fiery slogans – “We’re all gonna burn in hell!” – like a crazed art-school diva. With Nick Zinner dishing thick, badass riffs and Brian Chase laying down thudding drums, this was vicious garage punk that put fear into the hearts of bass players everywhere.

No album summed up the glories of Nineties radio as perfectly as Supa Dupa Fly, the spaced-out avant-funk bomb that introduced Missy as the don of Virginia Beach. With her partner in crime, Timbaland, Missy claimed hip-hop and R&B as her personal playground, with a voice that dripped soul whether she was singing, rapping, or just chanting the words “beep beep” wherever she could fit them in. Missy struts her stuff in hits like “The Rain,” “Sock It 2 Me” and the hysterical “Izzy Izzy Ahh,” conquering the world and getting her vroom on. Years later, Supa Dupa Fly still sounds futuristic.

They called themselves the Beat, and they lived up to the moniker: no other UK ska-revival act had their knack for festive rhythm. I Just Can’t Stop It showed they were a great dance band, with the ragamuffin toasting of Ranking Roger and sweet saxophone lines of graybeard horn-maestro Saxa floating atop the incessant beat. But they were also a razor-sharp pop group. Lead singer Dave Wakeling wrote deft melodies and lyrics that cast a sharp, cold eye on romance and Thatcher-era politics. The album title doubles as a party-credo and – if you listen to words of the torrid “Mirror in the Bathroom” – a lampoon of preening pretty boys.

Daft Punk’s debut is pure synapse-tweaking brilliance. French duo Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo proved that techno and house could be as elastic, catchy and, at times, as funny as the poppiest pop without diluting its hypnotically driving, acidic essence. Homeawork had standout hits – like “Da Funk” and the anthemically bloopy “Around the World.” But it was paced like a great album, weaving hip-hop and funk (and, on “Rock N Roll,” even some Seventies glam) into the mix, with pauses for oceanic contemplation (the guitar-washed “Flesh”) and hip-hop influenced skits like “WDPK 83.7 FM,” in which a French-accented robo-DJ promises “the sound of tomorrow and the music of today.” Considering their towering shadow over all subsequent EDM, that brag sounds like truth in advertising.