Reckon the Sex Pistols pioneered punk, Nirvana invented grunge, 50 Cent’s thug life raps are original, Arthur is kwaito’s godfather and Fokofpolisiekar’s suburban garage rock ennui is unique? Think again. If you’re after a road map of indisputable musical revolutions then tune into these 30 albums that really changed music.

1950s

ELVIS PRESLEY
'Elvis Presley' (1956)
The album that invented teen pop mania: from the carnal rockabilly howl of 'Blue Suede Shoes' and the lustful rhythm & blues come-on of 'Tutti Frutti' to a corny country ballad revamp of that old Valentine’s nugget 'Blue Moon'. Before Elvis, popular music meant Tin Pan Alley cover croons to be consumed by moms and dads only.

FRANK SINATRA
'Songs For Swingin’ Lovers' (1956)
A bar stool balladeer finds his finger-snapping Vegas lounge lizard flow on this swinging set of suave romantic standards. Definitive renditions of 'You Make Me Feel So Young' and 'I’ve Got You Under My Skin' sanction Great American Songbook career-savers for countless crooners to come including Robbie Williams, Rod Stewart, Barry Manilow and more.

1960s

ROBERT JOHNSON
'King Of The Delta Blues Singers' (1961)
The myth of Satan penning the best tunes begins at these Mississippi blues crossroads where Johnson allegedly sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his finger-picking expertise. Without demonic blues wails like 'Hellhound On My Trail' the Rolling Stones, Clapton, Led Zeppelin and the White Stripes wouldn’t have existed.

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART
'Trout Mask Replica' (1969)
'Trout Mask Replica' careens from dizzyingly abstract garage rock guitar duels and spastic R&B rhythms to almost incoherent free jazz experimentation. The beatnik overhaul of Howling Wolf’s blues rasp was a catalyst for Tom Waits, while the surreal genre-mash echoes in those wannabe avant-garde post-punk bands worth tuning in to from Pere Ubu to The Mars Volta.

1970s

BLACK SABBATH
'Black Sabbath' (1970)
30 hallucinogenic minutes of claustrophobic slow-motion British blues rock spawns heavy metal. While Ozzy Osbourne’s possessed shrieks about Satan and the apocalypse carved the foundation for amped up, tonsil toasters like Metallica, Geezer Butler’s ponderous bass and Tony Iommi’s bludgeoning guitar also proved a crucial influence on dazed and confused grunge generation torch bearers such as Soundgarden and Nirvana.

PATTI SMITH
'Horses' (1975)
When Patti screamed "Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine" the rulebook for female singers was forever shredded. No more pop budgies, jazz songbirds or suicidal Janis rock stereotypes. Instead a blasphemously raw personal affirmation of uncompromising art whose feline-fuelled righteousness gave generations of women from Blondie and Courtney Love to PJ Harvey and Juliette Lewis a reason to rock. Her rewiring of Beat poetry and primitive punk also influenced Talking Head David Byrne and REM’s Michael Stipe.

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From the May 2007 Music issue of GQ magazine.
AUGUSTUS PABLO
'King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown' (1976)
A master class in the dark art of dub. Maverick Jamaican studio technician King Tubby turns the mixing console into an instrument, adding deconstructed, echo-drenched instrumental layers to producer and key-board maestro Augustus Pablo’s otherworldly melodies and roots-driven Kingston street rhythms. Without Uptown there would be no turntablism, no trip hop, no DJ remixes and yes, no rave music.

FELA KUTI & THE AFRIKA 70
'Zombie' (1976)
25 minutes that shattered Western stereotypes of African music. Fela’s discordant horn solos and drummer Tony Allen’s polyrhythmic percussion fuelled a cacophonic fusion of jazz, funk, West African highlife and traditional Nigerian Yoruba chants into a ridiculously catchy Afrobeat classic that was also a razor-sharp black consciousness critique of post-colonial African politics and identity. Paul McCartney, James Brown, Stevie Wonder and Cream’s Ginger Baker scurried to Lagos to take tips.

KRAFTWERK
'Trans-Europe Express' (1977)
Electronica’s Rosetta Stone: part cybernetic philosophy, part scientific study, Trans-Europe Express quite simply declared rock dead. The German duo’s innovative employment of synthesisers, sequencers and assorted studio trickery sculpted an exquisitely urbane ode to technology and travel that prompted Afrika Bambaataa to stumble onto hip hop by sampling the title track on his seminal 'Planet Rock'. Their macabre sense of humour and hypnotic simplicity proved equally influential on everyone from industrial poster boys like Einsturzende Neubauten to synth-pop strategists such as the Pet Shop Boys.

1980s

TALKING HEADS
'The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads' (1982)
From the manic no wave neuroses of Psycho Killer and the Afrobeat funk flow of 'I Zimbra' to the apocalyptic punk paranoia of 'Life During Wartime', this live collection of early Heads classics influenced everyone from REM and the Pixies to current indie rock revivalists Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Killers and The Good, The Bad and The Queen.

ABDULLAH IBRAHIM
'Mannenberg - Is Where It's Happening' (1983)
The master pianist’s two-part song suite fuses melodic African and Cape Jazz folk tones with the improvisation of American jazz and blues traditions and the technical proficiency of European classical music. His hypnotic — and just a little Monkish — left hand motifs on 'The Pilgrim' and the spiritually swinging anti-apartheid title track may have tuned overseas ears into his sound, but this isn’t mere bop imitation. It’s an authentic African jazz vocabulary that inspired a new generation of proudly South African piano architects including Paul Hanmer, Moses Molelekwa, Andile Yenana and more.

MADONNA
'Like A Virgin' (1984)
So history ultimately proved critics who dismissed Madonna as an ‘unimportant annoying one-hit-wonder’ wrong. Hearing Madge squeal "You made me feel, shiny and new…." still makes 'Like A Virgin' every guy’s cherry-popping wet dream. It’s a thoroughly calculated dance pop coo on Madge’s part of course. Add the Marilyn disco bitch routine of Material Girl and you’ve got the Holy Grail for Britney, Christina and countless other Lolita-toned teen pop cock teases.

RUN DMC
'Run DMC' (1988)
Forget DJ Grandmaster Flash’s block party beats and Afrika Bambaataa’s electro-disco-funky flow. Run DMC gave hip-hop its urban edge. Fuelled by Jam Master Jay’s spastic scratching and infectiously minimal sequenced beats and Run DMC’s blend of hardcore braggadocio rhymes and conscious socio-political raps, RUN DMC was the first rap album to go gold, paving the way forward for Public Enemy, The Roots and Nas.

1990s

NIRVANA
'Nevermind' (1991)
Soundgarden’s 'Badmotorfinger' may have been heavier and Mudhoney’s 'Superfuzz Bigmuff' more authentically grunge, but 'Nevermind' was the album that made alternative rock relevant again in the ’90s. Cathartic existential rock war cries such as 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' and 'Come As You Are' not only saved alienated suburban slackers from suicide with their cranked up punk-metal power chords and their helter-skelter hooks, but initiated a conveyor belt of post grunge imitators who pissed all over Kurt Cobain’s counter-cultural legacy by airbrushing his anguish into an MTV rock chart dead cert.

RADIOHEAD
'The Bends' (1995)
A modern rock master class: not just because lead singer Thom Yorke’s falsetto-fuelled adventures in angst sounded acres more authentic than the pub crawling, hooligan schlock rock of Oasis, but because unapologetically literate gems such as 'Bones', 'Just' and 'My Iron Lung' sign-posted stadium rock sensitivity as the only Brit-pop evolution worth imitating. How else to explain the chart-topping metro-sexual mopes of Coldplay, Keane, Snow Patrol and James Blunt?

» For the complete list of 30 albums that changed the face of music get GQ's May Music issue on sale now.