Personally Important Albums

The first album I remember listening to. This is probably the first and only music that I got from my parents. I don't even think they listened to it much, but it was in a big collection of CDs they had at the time.

This was the first physical CD I owned (my brother and I shared). Weird Al was the first purchases I made on iTunes back in the day.

My brother and I were very close with our cousins Ben and Eris growing up. Ben put us onto Linkin Park. He gave my brother the Reanimation album for Christmas one year too. This album has such heavy heavy nostalgia for me.

When my brother was in middle school, we used to take his friend Justin to school in the morning. He was always dressed in all black and I remember learning about Korn from him. A few years later, I randomly picked this album to listen to and Korn has been one of my favorite bands since.

I hyper obsessed with this band for a bit. I absolutely loved seeing them at Warped Tour with crowd surfers and mosh pits. When this album came out, I listened to it on repeat. It's still a top tier album for me.

My brother had the physical album of this. I remember listening to this a lot and not even super liking it, but it was so weird it kept me coming back. This was probably one of the first rap albums I listened to and Tech N9ne ended up being my first rap show. (Jay Rock opened up for him which is cool to look back at).

Everyone had their Eminem phase, lol. I got into him during the Relapse/Refill/Recovery albums were coming out. I bought this online and burned it on a disk which I had playing in the car constantly.

I learned about NOFX when I started playing bass. Fat Mike was a big inspiration. They had so much music out by the time I learned of them, I just bought a huge compilation album by them. This was probably the last physical CD I bought for quite a while since the rise of streaming and Bluetooth was really getting popular.

I started smoking weed in college with my friends from across the hall. My friend Xu and I would listen to this on all of our road trips to Michigan, usually to pick up weed, lol. Xu really helped me get into rap as a genre.

I didn't like Tyler and his edgy albums before this came out. I was a huge contrarian to Yonkers. Xu told me to give him another try when this album came out and I listened to it non-stop. I can still probably rap along to 90% of it. I wanted that hat so bad, lol.

I knew the boys were something special when I found them. They had a sound that no one else had. I was always bumping them in my car during roadies. I Want to Die in New Orleans became one of my favorite albums ever.

My ex loved Sufjan and showed me this album. At first, I didn't really like it. I didn't get the sad vibes of it all. A year or so later, I revisited it and it became the soundtrack to my life for a while. My favorite album of all time.

I was on vacation with my brother and his friends when I overheard someone listening to Mandolin Orange (now Watchhouse). I never like country, but I really liked the sound these guys had with a mandolin and violin. I learned that not All country is bad, lol.

I learned about this band by seeing Sirius Blvck perform at Indiana City Brewery (RIP) wearing a shirt of theirs. It honestly was just a cool shirt, but when I heard this album, I was amazed. By this time, I had stopped listening to metal as much. I thought the genre was getting stale. Code Orange is such a unique band, I was hooked instantly.