A washed-up jazz crooner reinvents himself as a bar stool balladeer. Sinatra?s cool confessions nail his bust-up with babe Ava Gardner. Take a long sip from the bottom of the bottle ennui that makes this the greatest break-up album ever. 2. Hank Williams: 40 Greatest Hits
The only country and western album you?ll ever need to own. Honky tonk?s own Elvis cruises down the original boulevard of broken dreams, narrating his tear-in-my-beer tales of cheating hearts and being 'Whiskey Bent And Hell Bound'. 3. Billie Holiday: Lady In Satin
The blues breaks. Lady Day channels her junkie pride into a set of naked torch songs that provides the fucked-over and fucked-up emotional outline for Janis Joplin, Marianne Faithfull, Courtney Love and countless soul-baring psycho-chicks to come. 4. Miles Davis: Kind Of Blue
This is the most critically-hyped jazz album ever. But it?s worth it just to hear Miles?s impressionistic trumpet tones leading master sax blaster Coltrane into spacious tone poems that actually swing through the silences. 5. Muddy Waters: Muddy Waters At Newport
The album that got Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Keith Richards hooked on electric blues. The primal chord-call fuelling 'Hoochie Coochie Man', 'Got My Mojo Working' and 'Baby Please Don?t Go' inject sex straight into the whole rock ?n roll equation. 6. Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited
Folk music plugs in. This was Dylan?s electric move and quickly elevated his freewheelin? verse from hippie-protest poems to a singer-songwriter who actually sounds like he makes a difference, man.
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7. John Coltrane: A Love Supreme
The heavyweight saxo champ?s spiritual search for redemption starts here. The notes of polyrhythmic sax invoke a prayer-like path beyond generic jazz into the serenity of sound itself.
The Rosetta Stone of homegrown jazz. Bras Kippie Moeketsi (sax), Abdullah Ibrahim (piano), Jonas Gwangwa (trombone) and Hugh Masekela (trumpet) shape the sound of South African jazz still to come on this pioneering adventure in township be-bop. 9. Beach Boys: Pet Sounds
Shelving the surf songs. Brian Wilson locks himself in a studio to create his answer to the Beatles?s 'Rubber Soul'. The result? A psychedelic pop masterpiece and, in 'God Only Knows', the best wedding anniversary song ever. 10. The Velvet Underground: The VU and Nico
The dark side of the ?60s summer of love. Scraping viola drones, gritty guitars and glacial folk ballads map everything from S&M fantasies and drug celebrations to blank celebrity hangovers. 11. Jimi Hendrix: Electric Ladyland
A psychedelic blues rock head-knock. Hendrix?s LSD-laced acid rock test, an unnervingly high octane overhaul of Dylan?s 'All Along the Watchtower' and that nude album cover make 'Ladyland' an essential snapshot of the ?60s looking beyond flower power. 12. The Beatles: The White Album
The sound of the Fab Four falling apart at the seams. A blockbusting collage of pristine pop, rollicking rock ?n roll, novelty sing-alongs, and in Harrison?s 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' the best song Lennon and McCartney never wrote. 13. The Stooges: Funhouse
The definitive garage punk blueprint. Oozing a young, fucked-up anger, Iggy Pop, as chairman of the bored, leads his three chord stooges on a sex and drug-addled street crawl that remains a garage punk-rock blueprint. 14. Miles Davis: Bitches Brew
Jazz has left the building. Tune into his bitchin? improvised ambient, psychedelic, soul, funk, rock and blues jam brew or just drop out. Spin a vinyl copy on 45rpm and you?ll hear just where the drum ?n bass generation stole all their broken beat strategies from, too. 15. Serge Gainsbourg: The Ballad of Melody Nelson
Seriously seedy. Okay, okay, it?s a concept album about a dirty old man cruising for teen pussy in his Rolls-Royce. Unsurprisingly, chamber pop doesn?t get more erotic than hearing Gainsbourg?s lascivious lounge lizard croon coupled with Jane Birkin?s breathy Lolita whispers. 16. Rolling Stones: Exile On Main Street
Rock ?n roll?s finest hangover. With Mick busy shagging Bianca, it was left to Keith to mainline country, blues, and R&B into a head-heavy rock ?n roll collection of sheer lyrical gems. 17. Elvis Presley: Aloha From Hawaii via Satellite
The madness of King Elvis. A rock ?n roll prophesy of reality TV with Presley refurbishing 'Blue Suede Shoes', 'Hound Dog', 'Fever' and 'Suspicious Minds' with spellbinding glam karaoke crooning covers. 18. Bob Marley & The Wailers: Exodus
Religious Rasta experience. Exodus showcases Marley in the role of 'Natural Mystic', a Rasta prophet blending funk, disco-dub and psych-rock into the smoking reggae anthems 'Jamming' and 'Exodus'. 19. Prince: Sign o? The Times
Royal question: How does a midget with a perm and tight pants pull so many chicks? Simple: deliver a Masters class in soul seduction that marries Ray Charles?s blues and James Brown?s panty-moistening funk bravado with x-rated old school soul slow dance moves that put sex back into pop. 20. U2: The Joshua Tree
Zeitgeist moment. An Irish band avoids becoming also-rans after taking a holiday in the Mojave desert with a landscaped selection of epic, hook-laden guitar ballads and subtle, well-crafted stories that perfectly capture our search for political and deeper personal meaning. 21. Bernoldus Niemand: Wie is Bernoldus Niemand?
Forget Kombuis, Kerkorrel or even the Kalahari Surfers. When it comes to bakgat alternative Afrikaans protest songs, James Phillips?s alternative country tales of moustaches and military conscription are a mind-altering snapshot of what apartheid?s madness meant to white men. 22. Arthur: Kaffir
In the beginning. Way before he was choreographing ?cake cutting? (Sika Lekhekhe), kwaito king Arthur dropped a generation?s defining sonic calling card. M?Du designed the blueprint and Mandoza crossed it over for whiteys? ears, but Kaffir is the album that really kick-started the kwaito revolution. 23. Mudhoney: Superfuzz Bigmuff
The real sound of Seattle. Forget the slick chart attack of Nirvana?s 'Nevermind', 'Bigmuff' is the real deal. A greasy concoction of garage punk that celebrates the simple joys of chasing skirts and getting stoned. 24. Johnny Cash: American Recordings IV ? The Man Comes Around
Brutally honest. Deconstructions of Nine Inch Nails?s 'Hurt', The Beatles?s 'In My Life', Depeche Mode?s 'Personal Jesus' and more make this set of country covers an appropriate epitaph for the outright King of Outlaw Country. 25. Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP
A meta-rap masterpiece. This collection blurs the boundaries between humour, horror, satire and documentary with super-slick rhymes freeing hip-hop from its ghetto-life straitjacket. 26. Zim Ngqawana: Vadzimu
Visionary. This saxophone-fuelled song suite marries intellectual and spiritual jazz traditions, tracing the beat routes of the African Diaspora. Music to dance to, make love to, weep over and even laugh along with. 27. Nouvelle Vague: Nouvelle Vague
The only covers album you?ll ever need. Bossa Nova makeovers of ?80s favourites from The Cure, XTC and Depeche Mode to Joy Division and The Clash make this essential aural wallpaper for those who appreciate how music is best branded as another lifestyle accessory. 28. Felix Laband: Dark Days Exit
Fairytale dream world. Dosing Steve Reich?s classical cool with Ennio Morricone?s cinemascapes, shadowy electro-funk, deep dub and cartoon electro-pop electronic savant Felix Laband tweaks our synapses with his altered universe of glitches, beats ?n breaks. 29. The Mars Volta: Frances The Mute
New sounds. Packed with comfortably mind-numbing Pink Floyd melodrama, string-laced, post-rock acoustics and a paranoid Radiohead flow full of surreal tempo changes and psychedelic fire, this is the sound of 21st century rock re-imagining itself as a spaced-out spaghetti western. 30. R Kelly: TP.3 Reloaded
Reality TV R&B. If Outkast and Kanye West are hip-hop?s Messiahs, then R Kelly is the urban contemporary anti-Christ. His utter lack of irony on soap-operatic magnum opus 'Trapped In The Closet' make this a rhythmic excursion you?ll play over and over again.
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