Albums That Changed Music

Msn's Entertainment page provides its own opinion and insight in to which 12 albums changed music.

Albums on the list include German "Krautrock" group Kraftwerk who developed an electronic sound through their album Autobahn in 1975 which would later inspire pop, rock, dance and hip hop in latter decades.David Bowie's Low album which incorporated the ambient production of legendary producer and ex-Roxy Music keyboardist Brian Eno and The Thin White Duke's new-found love for electronics, Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells album - which is famously remembered for spawning The Exorcist theme tune, namely Sentinel - and Led Zeppelin through Robert Plant and Jimmy Page's 1969 debut album Led Zeppelin I with blues rock and progressive element experimentation, rounds off the sounds of the '70s and the change of music.

Also a recent album on the list is hip hop star Kanye West's The College Dropout which helped meld electronic experimentation with the staple rhythm and rapping vocal syle.

However are these really a definitive list? Did these albums really change music? What are the albums that stick out in your mind as changing music, or your perception of it? What are your favourites? Did they help inspire a genre, image, lyrical or musical style never seen before? Or do you just like them for what they are?

My five are as follows:

Moody Blues - Days Of Future Passed 1967 - This Birmingham group were notable for their second album Days Of Future Passed which helped inspire progressive rock groups like Genesis, Pink Floyd and artistic rockers like Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) with their classical and symphonic 1970s soundscapes. A concept album which included classically trained musicians on flutes, oboes and the staple guitar, bass and drums and the new-found keyboards, Justin Hayward's crisp vocals captured UK and particularly US audiences, with lead single Nights In White Satin reaching #2 in America in 1972 and the album reaching #3 in the Billboard 100 chart. The single and album both reached the Top 30 in the UK and helped inspire groups of a rock and pop aesthetic on how to make classical, contemporary.

Pet Shop Boys - Please 1986 - Pet Shop Boys' debut album Please witnessed the harnessing of thought-provoking synthesized pop music with the hip-hop and electro rhythms and musical scene evident in New York and Chicago and created a pleasant uptempo and memorable melodical and lyrical hit. Pet Shop Boys' sound melded the intelligently crafted US dance music scene with the fun-yet-serious pop aesthetic and delivered something seldom seen before. Singles including West End Girls, Suburbia and Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money) are the standout hits on this record. Named in their early years as a "posh rap group" through Neil Tennant's steadily deadpan yet alluring vocal delivery, the most successful electronic duo worldwide through 50 million album sales to date, would also help inspire current groups like The Killers through their mixture of rock textures with pop on their album Behaviour, like fellow synthesized pop act Depeche Mode's moody album Violator also did in 1990.

Moby - Moby 1990 - Developing the ambient layers often heard on Brian Eno records throughout the 1970s and 1980s, multi-instrumentalist Richard Melville Hall - Moby, said to be related to Moby Dick author Herman Melville - crafted a debut album which offered the music world a unique partnership of uptempo rhythms and orchestral strings which would later inspire others including Leftfield and Orbital to do the same. Lead single Go would piece together the rave-meets-chillout sound and helped spawn some of the wonderful electronic textures of the 1990s.

Goldfrapp - Supernature 2005 - Helped by the dreamy and punchy combination of Alison Goldfrapp's glam-like disco vocals, Goldfrapp through Will Gregrory's synthetic production took the sounds of Queen, Sparks and T-Rex in the 1970s and re-created them for a new audience in the current decade. Whilst developing onwards from her Kate Bush folk/pop influence, Alison Goldfrapp would front some of the curious ambient guitar strum and icy electronic sounds on singles including Ooh La La and Ride A White Horse on 2005's Supernature. Since then we have seen this disco chic glam-rock/pop aesthetic increase with artists like Lady Gaga and Little Boots - the latter a name widely tipped to be a huge hit following her album release on June 8th - adopting this new-found amalgamation.

Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreak 2008 - An album written amidst a relationship break-up and family death, Kanye West had a lot to write about and inspire with this lyrical and musical masterpiece. With the aid of the Roland TR-808 drum machine - hence the album title - and West's new found wizardry of the Auto-Tune vocoder technology - a speech synthesis tool - and careful mixture of tribal drum rhythms and subtle synthesized piano and keyboard textures, the US rapper helped progress the "Electronica" genre meeting the punchy 'in yer face' mentality of Hip Hop on singles including Heartless and Love Lockdown. A mixture of frenetic and gentle, 808s & Heartbreak is an inspiration and showcase to how electronics have helped widen R&B and Hip Hop's audiences and fitting lyrical patchworks in simultaneously.

These are mine.
What about yours?

Now time to go and sit back with a beer and watch the Champions League Final.