![]() ![]() 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. Alex Turner sang about waiting all week for Saturday night, only to strike out with the same local girls he bombed with last week. 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. Image Credit: Courtesy of Domino Recording Company Arctic Monkeys, ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ (2006).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. 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. Most bands try to go for a hot new sound on their debut album. Devo, ‘Q: Are We Not Men? We Are Devo!’ (1978).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. ![]() Chilton, who had been a teenage star with the Box Tops, sang in a high, bright voice that bristled against jagged, ringing guitars. 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. 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.Īlex Chilton and Chris Bell were the Memphis whiz kids at the heart of Big Star. 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. These people nailed it on Day One.Ĭoming 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. You’d be surprised: The road to unimpeachable greatness is often paved with forgotten false starts. And please don’t us until you make sure your favorite band’s classic first album is actually, in fact, their first album. ![]() EPs and mixtapes were not considered, and we skipped solo debuts by artists who were already in well-known bands, which is why you won’t see John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Paul Simon, or The Chronic. With that in mind, albums got knocked down a few slots if the artist went on to far greater achievements conversely, we gave a little extra recognition to debuts that were so great you almost can’t fault the artist for not making anything as good for the rest of their career. What makes a killer debut album? First off, a sense of a band or artist arriving fully formed, ready to upend the game right at that very second. ![]() Here are the 100 greatest out-of-the-box LP statements ever. 2022 is the anniversary of some truly historic debuts - including classics by Pavement, Mary J Blige, Roxy Music, and the Clipse. ![]()
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