The JOE team select their favourite albums for National Album Day | #NAD

Music is life

That’s a cold hard fact as far as we’re concerned. It’s the one true universal language that we all understand.

Whether we’re celebrating a win, getting over a breakup, meditating, partying, getting dressed, mourning a death, or working out, music soundtracks our lives and everything in it.

And while a great song can make you feel better than any drug, what about those times you want to sit and reflect for longer than four minutes? What about those times you want get lost in a piece of art that talks to your soul while taking you on an audio journey of uncharted waters?

Well, that’s what an album is for.

And we’re not talking about a collection of songs thrown against a wall that the creator hopes sticks. We’re talking about a cohesive body of work that you can listen to from start to finish with a narrative that might be ongoing or might rear its head when you least expect it, you just never know and that’s the beauty of it.

We’re talking about a carefully selected tracklist that steers the listener in the right direction as they navigate through the highs, the lows, the moments of pure bliss and the moments of gut-wrenching tragedy.

We’re talking about those albums that aren’t afraid to be different, aren’t afraid to test you, aren’t afraid to open themselves up to questioning.

We’re talking about art.

Think about albums such as The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Kendrick Lamar’s good kid m.A.A.d. city, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street, The Clash’s London Calling, Bob Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde, Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, Nirvana’s Nevermind, Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, 2Pac’s Me Against the World, the list goes on and on.

To celebrate 70 years of the album format, today is the UK’s first ever National Album Day.

It’s a day designed to celebrate all aspects of the UK’s love of the album. It comes at the end of a week of gigs, programmes and listening parties across the country.

Doing our part, here at JOE we thought we’d share with you the albums that mean the most to us. It’s a chance for you to get to know us as a team – after all they do say that you can tell a lot about a person by what their favourite album is.

ALBUM: Lonerism

ARTIST: Tame Impala

Mike Kneebone, Videographer

“It’s really really hard to name just one album, but, here we are. There’s absolutely no way I can provide an explanation that will do this album justice, so I’ll keep it simple. Every time I listen to this album I find something new. It’s bloody amazing.”

ALBUM: Midnight Marauders

ARTIST: A Tribe Called Quest

Vikash Jasani, Brand Partnership Director

“I love this album for a lot of reasons, it’s back to back banger after banger, my favourite track being ‘Award Tour’, which if it comes up on headphones or I hear it in a club, it without fail gets me dancing.

“It was also probably one of the first albums I listened to front to back and after that it gave me a whole new respect and understanding of Hip Hop. The beats helped me discover the importance of a producer at the age of 10 and the album as a whole led me on to so many more great rappers and groups (De La Soul, Slum Village, etc).

“In a post Brexit world I think the line we all need to remember is summed up best in ‘Electric Relaxation’… “I like them brown, yellow, Puerto Rican, or Haitian.”

R.I.P. Phife”

ALBUM: Speakerboxxx / The Love Below

ARTIST: Outkast

Joe Lamb, Client Services Account Manager

“The first album I bought with my own money, I think I may have been around 12 or 13 when it came out and I remember having it in my Sony Walkman for months.

“I bought it because I remember hearing and liking the songs ‘Hey Ya’ and ‘Roses’ at the time. It’s been an album that I keep going back to every now and then and listening to certain songs and really enjoying them when I might not have done before.

“At the moment it’s all about ‘My Favourite Things’. There are no words in it, instead it’s just the two of them having fun. It’s an album that will stand the test of time by two guys who are absolute lads.”

ALBUM: After the Gold Rush

ARTIST: Neil Young

Rich Cooper, Producer

“When I was 22 I worked in a Waitrose in Leeds. I would often start work at 6am, meaning I would be walking into work in the godless hours, trudging down Otley Road, dodging the broken glass and takeaway containers strewn by students coming home after nights out.

“Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush would frequently accompany my journeys into work, the album’s soft timbre easing me into a long day of stacking shelves and wondering what I was doing with my life. I’d been through a heavy breakup, the end of my first long-term relationship, and Neil’s songs of sadness explored my feelings for me. And then, as sun came up over the city, perfectly timed, the seventh track ‘Don’t Let it Bring You Down’ would bring hope and light to a dark day.

“Music, like few other things, can transport you immediately to a time and a place and a person that you were. After the Gold Rush will always be close to me, a pocket of time when I left one person and became another.”

ALBUM: Hot Fuss

ARTIST: The Killers

Gavin Johnson, Managing Director

“This album always brings back great memories of seeing them live at Glastonbury and then meeting my future wife soon after – ‘Mr. Brightside’ was the tune we danced many a night away to. It also brings back memories of seeing them play at Scala in Kings Cross with my Mrs. then heavily pregnant and the baby kicking to the beat!”

ALBUM: Bad

ARTIST: Michael Jackson

Lee Warner, Account Manager

“This album is literally the musical embodiment of the King of Pop moonwalking around his giant throne, at the peak of his powers, throwing nine of the greatest songs of all-time together. Just because he can. There isn’t a single bum note or dance step out of place in any of the incredible accompanying music videos. This album was my life source as a kid, I fed off it, I was obsessed with everything about it, and still am.”

ALBUM: Grace

ARTIST: Jeff Buckley

James Wilkins, Executive Creative Director

“There’s been so many albums that have indelibly left their mark on my life that even contemplating choosing one gave me palpitations. So I’ve opted for the album where the first few minutes listening very literally caused a seismic shift in my perception of music.

“On a different day, I could easily be talking about hearing the mesmerising rolling bass line that opens Massive Attack’s Blue Lines or the thunderclap I felt with the power chords introducing Nirvana’s Nevermind, or how you can taste the lamp-lit smokey haze on the recording of Chet Baker: Live At Ronnie Scott’s. But not today.

“In 2005, eight years after he’d died, I heard the name Jeff Buckley. I was at my friend’s flat in South London when he put a CD on and played the title track ‘Grace’. He said I might like it. I did. 5 minutes and 22 seconds later there was a pregnant silence before I mumbled, “…oh shit.” My relationship with music changed permanently. Little did I know, I’d missed Jeff some years earlier at Reading Festival – a decision I’d posthumously regret forever but I’d make up for with hours and hours of listening to this fabled album.

“Grace is a complex, genre-defying work blending Jeff Buckley’s studious consumption of everything from rock, classical, folk, jazz, blues and soul expressed through his otherworldly talent as writer, vocalist and guitarist.

“But what made this album so beautiful to me? What made it so complete, despite its shifting tones and influences – so enduring? It could be the ethereal, inhuman voice that soars effortlessly above his multi-textured guitar swinging from delicate to ferocious – from the nuances of ‘Mojo Pin’ to the brutal in ‘Eternal Life’. It might be the poetry of his lyrics – “she’s the tear that hangs inside my soul forever” – or his eschewing the conventional verse-chorus-verse structure of his contemporaries as seen on ‘Last Goodbye’. It might be the sadness of learning that the artist that you had just discovered had already died – his own life a song unfinished.

“Both time-capsule and time-machine, this album preserves its original genius while travelling forward with me, even evolving but also with the power to jolt me back to that evening in 2005 with each listen. Some things just defy explanation, “Oh shit” will have to do. Perhaps it’s a fruitless task to ask oneself why an album is your favourite and simply accept that it is, slip on the headphones and just press play.”

ALBUM: Ginuwine… The Bachelor

ARTIST: Ginuwine

Will “ill Will” Lavin, Head of Music & Lifestyle

“Music is my life, it’s a part of my DNA. Which if you think about it is to be expected being that I’m the Head of Music for JOE, right? Sure, you could question the many high-ranking record label executives and people in power at various other music-related companies that know nothing about music and have no real passion for music. However, I am not one of them.

“I say all that to say this: I could have chosen a thousand different albums that I consider my favourite. I could have listed hundreds I deem important to me. But I can maybe only choose five or 10 that changed my life.

“One of these albums was Ginuwine… The Bachelor. When it dropped in 1996 I was 13-years-old. I laugh now because at that age I had no idea what a bachelor was. But more than that I had no idea what a ‘Ginuwine’ was or even how to pronounce it.

I remember going to my local record store – in fact it wasn’t even a record store, it was an electronics store called HBH Woolacotts in the tiny town of Holsworthy in Devon – to ask them if they could order it in for me after I saw the videos for both ‘Pony’ and ‘When Doves Cry’ on MTV. I pronounced his name ‘Gean-ooh-wine.’

“When it arrived – on cassette I might add – and I played it for the first time, it was at that moment my life changed forever. My soul was transported to somewhere it had never been before. It was both futuristic and classic all at the same time.

“Timbaland’s simplistic yet mind boggling drum loops that blended with heart-achingly painful synths and nature sounds (wind, rain, thunder) were so new to me and really blew my mind – I hadn’t yet truly explored Prince but this album prepared me for the purple one’s music. 

“Songs like ‘Only When Ur Lonely’ and ‘World Is So Cold’ readied me for the many romantic heartbreaks I was going to experience as a teenager, while ‘Holler’ and ‘Tell Me Do U Wanna’ inspired me to start creating my own slow jam tapes – Spotify playlists wish they were this cool.

“‘When Doves Cry’ was the stand out for me and it wasn’t until I dug into the cassette’s inlay that I discovered the original was actually by Prince – remember I was 13 at the time – and for that I will forever thank Ginuwine.

“Going on to become one of my favourite R&B artists because of this album, alongside Jon B, Ginuwine educated me through music on what it meant to be a man, be in love, and he inspired a level of swagger in my personality I could never have got anywhere else – I told him this the first time I met him and it’s still one of my most cherished memories as a music journalist.

“Musically this album opened up so many doors. Whether it was discovering the rest of Timbaland’s squad – Missy Elliott, Aaliyah, Playa, Magoo – learning about Prince’s music, or finding out about the movie The Usual Suspects through the various samples on the album, Ginuwine… The Bachelor had it all.

“Oh, and did I forget to mention that I was a dancer? Through school this album was used to practice my many dance moves and went on to soundtrack many of my Dance A-Level and University Degree performances.

“And one last thing. ‘Pony’ is an incredible record, hence why it’s still so relevant today. So please do me a favour and stop calling it the Magic Mike song, it’s so much more than that so give it the respect it deserves.”

ALBUM: Spiderland

ARTIST: Slint

John Breslin, Senior Videographer

“Picking a favourite album is tough as it’s something that probably changes on a weekly basis. I’ve gone for this one because it sits neatly at the intersection of personal nostalgia, simple/effective engineering techniques and raw songwriting genius.

“Released on the hugely influential Touch and Go record label in 1991, it’s innovative and peppered with dynamic hooks but emotional and heavy in all the right places. Writing this record around the same time as Nirvana’s Nevermind, Slint were slightly younger yet confident enough to take their alternative rock sound to more delicate and unusual places. This was their second and final recording, and I consider myself lucky to have been with great friends in different countries watching them play songs from it over the past decade.

“If you’re into it, check out Breadcrumb Trail, Lance Bangs’ excellent film about the band.”

ALBUM: Born to Run

ARTIST: Bruce Springsteen

Jack Beetlestone, Senior Videographer

“I first heard Born to Run when I was around 18, so it’s still relatively new to me compared to my other main musical interests. However it immediately made an impact and opened up a new world of American music. Springsteen for me is the ultimate story teller and Born to Run encapsulates this. The characters and visuals he creates of every day life are so vivid and cinematic that when this is combined with the huge sound of the E Street Band it makes for incredible listening.”

ALBUM: Is This It

ARTIST: The Strokes

Tom Park, Creative Director: Football

“The staple soundtrack to my first car (Ford Metro, Inbetweeners Yellow), it’s a real coming of age album where I started growing my hair long and attempted to rabble together my first band at school. ‘Hard To Explain’, ‘New York City Cops’ and ‘Barely Legal’ are the highlights plus the album’s crowning jewel, ‘The Modern Age’. Best enjoyed being blasted out of a tape deck whilst on the way to a night out with the gang in the yellow beast.”

ALBUM: Wall of Arms

ARTIST: The Maccabees

George Crewe, Social Media Executive

“During my teenage/early adult years, The Maccabees were at the forefront of the late 2000s indie wave and this is my favourite of their four albums. It’s one of those albums that you can play through from start to finish without having to skip a track. Personal favourite tracks are ‘Wall of Arms’ and ‘Kiss and Resolve’.

“I still give it a spin on a weekly basis and reminisce about all the times I watched them live. Can’t believe this album is coming up to being 10-years-old! (I now feel old).

“The only downside to writing this, is the reminder that The Maccabees are no longer together.”

ALBUM: Bad

ARTIST: Michael Jackson

Dilraj Athwal, Brand & Strategy Director

“Bad is an incredible album and will always be the album that got me into music and the art of entertainment. Bad is more than an album, it’s a movie (Moonwalker) and it took dance and entertainment to the next level. The more entertaining songs made me obsess over Michael Jackson songs and dance moves with Moonwalker on repeat on VHS throughout holidays and weekends.

“‘Speed Demon’, ‘Bad’, ‘Leave Me Alone’, ‘Man in the Mirror’ and the mesmerising ‘Smooth Criminal’! The album never gets old. As I aged the album came on the journey with me as I developed an appreciation for songs like ‘Liberian Girl’, ‘Dirty Diana’, ‘Another Part of Me’, ‘I Just Can’t Stop Loving You’ and finally, one of the my all-time classics, ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’. The album has so much to offer from upbeat love songs, party bangers, reflective tunes and so much more.”

ALBUM: Rumours

ARTIST: Fleetwood Mac

Rhea Cheshire, Account Manager

“Bizarrely when I first thought about this, I thought my favourite album would be something I grew up listening to, or the first album I ever owned (Britney Spears’ …Baby One More Time, a close contender), but when I thought about it I realised that the best album of all-time is the one I only properly discovered in my first year at Uni: Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.

“I don’t even remember when it was or where I was when I heard it for the first time, but I do remember going out, walking to HMV and searching the racks to buy it (despite not having a CD player!). I just felt I needed to have it, to listen to it on repeat and to keep it, forever!

“There’s something about the album – every single song on it – that is absolutely timeless. It seems just as relevant today as it was when it was first released in 1977, which I think speaks volumes. Music tastes and trends tend to come and go, but there’s something about Rumours that’s evergreen. It’s hands down the best album, iconic.”

ALBUM: The Score

ARTIST: The Fugees

Rocket Long, Producer 

“The first album I ever bought! Fell in love with Lauryn Hill’s singing/rapping and tight political lyrics. The production levels on the album are ridiculous.”

ALBUM: (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?

ARTIST: Oasis

Jack Sullivan, Brand Partnerships Manager

“It’s 1995, I’m 7-years-old and I’ve just heard an accent not too dissimilar from my own telling me to “wipe the shit from my shoes”. The voice is Liam Gallagher’s and it’s coming through the bedroom wall via my sister’s CD player (rock & fucking roll). Whilst this entry won’t win any points for originality and there are hundreds of albums with better vocals and instrumentals, it’s loud, defiant, and most importantly the most authentic thing I’ve heard to this day and it changed the way I listen to music.

“I think of life as a series of sliding door moments where small events can shape what happens to the future unimaginably, and without being exposed to What’s the Story I genuinely don’t think I’d have had the same 23 years that have followed. So cheers, R kid, and sorry for nicking your CD.”

ALBUM: Bon Iver

ARTIST: Bon Iver

George King, Assistant Videographer

“Bon Iver is one of the most incredible and beautifully constructed albums to have ever been made. Lyrically sublime and sung like a cup of tea during an autumnal morning hangover, this album has been the soundtrack to many different aspects of my life and will forever be the backbone of my music collection.”

ALBUM: Kind of Blue

ARTIST: Miles Davis

Simon Clancy, Head of Audio

“Not only is this the greatest jazz album of all-time, it’s the greatest album. Fact. For two days in 1959 Davis gathered an all-star ensemble including John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley and created a masterpiece of improvisation, turning Charlie Parker’s bebop style, that had dominated jazz for years, on its head by creating a new sound. There were no rehearsals, Davis merely sketched the harmonies and note patterns and the band riffed on them.

“It’s sexy, melancholic, reflective and beautiful. It’s also haunting, powerful and if it were a painting it would hang in the Louvre and they’d queue out of the door to see it. You don’t even have to like jazz to love it – I dare even the biggest cynic not to melt at Davis’s incredible horn solo at the start of ‘Blue in Green’.

“It’s been the backbone album of my adult years, my go-to whether I’m happy or sad, alone or with friends. It is music and I can pay it no greater compliment than that.”

ALBUM: Turn on the Bright Lights

ARTIST: Interpol

Kyle Picknell, Staff Writer

“Open Spotify. Search Turn on the Bright Lights. Play from ‘Untitled’. Continue reading.

“Interpol’s debut album is the sound of the ambient noise from a New York city nightclub’s toilet cubicle if it was God in there doing lines instead of Patrick Bateman. In fact, they might both be together, huddled up against their own reflections in the porcelain, feeling more nefarious than ever, somehow still lighter than air.

“Turn on the Bright Lights comes in waves in the same way that memory does. When you catch that faint glimpse of an afterglow of an image, maybe it’s a face on the tube you think is someone it isn’t, maybe it’s the sight of your own vomit in a basin. It triggers something, everything. Back to a point in your life you remember like a scar. If I let ‘Untitled’ wash over long enough, not guitars but police sirens, a bassline that could carve a new landscape into a mountain range, I’m back to my very first day at university, hands behind my head on a small, uncomfortable bed, blasting the same song and thinking back to the same thing years before on the top bunk in the house I grew up in.

“There was a faint sound of a knock on my door, I can hear it more distinctly now, and someone telling me to turn it down. Then there was the faint sound of me not caring, and bliss, and then more. Eleven stages of it, a song about riding the subway in a post-9/11 daze, one about a sexual encounter on a submarine, another about a serial-killer, a malevolent butcher who just so happened to be your best friend. Not exactly songs about your life, but songs that turn into songs about your life somehow.

“As good and as tempting as the other albums are, don’t press pause. Let it play on. Let it ring out again a few years later and try and remember the last time, and then try and remember the time before that.”

ALBUM: My Dark Beautiful Twisted Fantasy

ARTIST: Kanye West

Reuben Pinder, Social Content Editor

“For all of Kanye’s flaws – of which there are many – one must occasionally be able to separate art from the artist. He has undergone a profound evolution throughout his musical career, and this was its peak.

“Combining the electronic vibes of its predecessor, 808s and Heartbreak, with more anthemic, arena rock production and the gritty, unapologetic lyricism of The College Dropout, this was Kanye’s best moment, before his music – and everything that surrounds it – took a turn for the worse. It’s an album that contains not a single skippable track, yet no standouts either. Some may point to ‘Runaway’, but for me ‘Gorgeous’ and ‘Dark Fantasy’ push it close.

“It’s a true masterpiece from one of the most unique, innovative and influential Hip Hop artists of the 21^st century.”

ALBUM: Pink Moon

ARTIST: Nick Drake

Stan Evans, CS Assistant

“One of my Dad’s heroes and now one of mine, this album was recorded in two late night sessions with just one guitar and one piano.

“This was the album that made me want to learn the guitar at around about 8-years-old, although I didn’t get around to it until I was 15. It was also the album that made me fall in love with the countryside, which I struggled to get used to after moving from London at 9-years-old. It’s the best folk album of all-time (don’t @ me) and it’s been my favourite album for almost as long as I can remember.”

ALBUM: Whatever People Say I Am, I’m Not

ARTIST: Arctic Monkeys

Murray Grindon, Production Coordinator

“This is the first album I seem to remember actively waiting for. After rushing into Woolworths late on a Sunday at 3:45pm to buy their single, ‘I Bet That You Look Good On The Dance Floor’, and then listening to that on repeat for about 14 solid hours I was desperate to hear more. So the day the album came out I took myself off to HMV and bought it.

ALBUM: InnerSpeaker

ARTIST: Tame Impala

Ciara Knight, Senior Writer

“This album serves as definitive proof that Kevin Parker is a wizard. He produced what I’m deeming to be one of the best debut albums ever to emerge. Tame Impala’s unique brand of psychedelic rock wasn’t something I had heard before and it grabbed my attention in a way that very few other bands had ever done.

“I was working a really crap and monotonous job when I discovered InnerSpeaker, when the only thing keeping me going was non-stop Spotify voyages to find decent distractions from my poor life choices that had led me to that point. Giddy at what I had heard, I rushed to buy the CD so I could listen to it in the car (it didn’t have an aux port). Of course the album wasn’t easily found, so it became a personal project of mine to physically track it down rather than accepting defeat and ordering online. Months later, when I had almost forgotten about my quest to obtain the golden CD, I found it in a specialist music shop in Dublin. That was a great day.

“The first time I got to see Tame Impala live, they played ‘Alter Ego’, my favourite track from the album, and I just about lost my fragile little mind. The lighting was trippy, the sound was huge, KP’s vocals were flawless and the whole band looked as if they couldn’t quite believe that the attendees of a small festival in Ireland knew all the words to one of their first releases.

“Eight years later, the album still holds up. They’ve somehow managed to reinvent their sound with two equally incredible albums added to their discography, but still managed to remain relevant and create that trademark psychedelic rock sound again and again. If you’re unfamiliar with InnerSpeaker, please treat your ears to the early days of Tame Impala’s story.”

ALBUM: The Inevitable and I

ARTIST: Harvard

Matt Sayward, Audio Strategist

“I’ve never been able to impose much creative discipline upon myself whenever I’ve made music. There’s has always been so many sub-genres that I’ve found myself lifting inspiration from that a creeping element of shapeshifting always found its way in from song to song. That’s always led the groups I’ve been in to become bands’ bands – our biggest fans were always amongst our peers, which is incredibly validating in many ways, but sadly financial affirmation is seldom one of them.

“All of which brings me here, recommending an album by a group that sits in the bands’ band category as steadfast and resolutely as any other.

“Many of my favourite records sound like they were designed to be released on IMAX rather than Spotify, and Harvard’s debut album The Inevitable and I has a particularly wide horizon. It is nothing short of vast.

“Shimmering production. Layers upon layers of atmospherics and ambience, dripping in delay and reverb. Buried earworms that only reveal themselves on repeat listens. And perhaps most importantly for a day celebrating the album, a complete absence of filler.

“Producer Brian McTernan has a track record of helming records with this kind of appeal – dreamy yet grand, cinematic yet intimate – and this is perhaps his finest work.

“Harvard roam an impressive canvas that encompasses everything from indie rock to shoegaze to post-hardcore, but what really pushes this release into an upper echelon is the performance from vocalist Jesse Clasen, who has range in several senses. As well as soaring through a high register that is straight-up out of reach to most male vocalists, Clasen’s dynamic range is nothing short of remarkable, often sweeping from soothing to visceral within a single verse.   

“This album is not for everyone. But in the right ears, it’s buried treasure.

“If your regular rotation includes artists like Brand New, Manchester Orchestra, Circa Survive, or frankly any other alternative rock bands that meander towards the section of the map marked ‘emo’, then you ought to spend an hour with this record. Otherwise you might be missing out on one of the best albums you’ve never heard. I would be.”

ALBUM: Home Sweet Home

ARTIST: Kano

Ré Poko, Social Media Executive

“Kano’s Home Sweet Home was an instant classic for me.

“It’s a masterpiece. A skilfully blended body of work with seamless transitions between Kano’s original ‘grimey’ sound, melodic production, thoughtful and timeless lyricism with an added dash of quintessential London grit.

“With a name like Home Sweet Home, Kano definitely set himself the task of creating an ode to East London. A task he achieved in trademark Kano fashion – effortlessly. It was revolutionary. Where else could you hear a raw grime anthem like ‘P’s and Q’s’ alongside production from Diplo and samples from Black Sabbath. Kano even showed us his emotional side and explored themes of love, loss and grief.

“Arguably, bar a few very notable exceptions, Kano set a standard for albums by UK rap and grime artists that wouldn’t be challenged for around a decade.

“It’ll forever be an album I associate with East London in the early 2000s. An album I associate with real physical CDs, pirate radio, and MCs who took command of a room from the first ‘Yo’ to the minute the mic dropped.”

ALBUM: The Midnight Organ Fight

ARTIST: Frightened Rabbit

Darragh Murphy, Senior Writer

“When going through a heartwrenching breakup, there’s a strange compulsion to make yourself even sadder by listening to the kind of music that makes the pain feel even more real. That’s what The Midnight Organ Fight is. It’s the scribblings and wailings of a man who is enduring the gamut of emotions that comes when that special someone leaves your life. Reminders that “it takes more than fucking someone to keep yourself warm” and perfectly expressed cries of helplessness like “I hate when I feel like this and I never hated you” will make you cry.

“The album is nothing short of a masterpiece, with catchy melodies carrying screeched honesty for 14 tracks. The record will forever have an ominous air about it after Frightened Rabbit’s lead singer and songwriter, Scott Hutchison, tragically took his own life earlier this year.

“On the album’s penultimate song, he asked “Is there peace beneath the roar of the Forth Road Bridge?” Hutchison’s body was found not far from Forth Road in Edinburgh in May. He was a genius and he gave us the quintessential heartbreak album.”

ALBUM: Different Class

ARTIST: Pulp

Nooruddean Choudry, Editorial Creative Director

“When Different Class came out, I was at school. A school I didn’t much like because it made me feel inferior and poor. I got in because I passed my eleven-plus, whilst all my mates went to the local state secondary.

“People made fun of me because I had dinner tickets for free meals due to us being low income, and I didn’t have the right shoes so polished my brown ones black. I was often reminded that I was a different class, and not in a good way.

“Whilst I was developing a chip on both shoulders and a healthy dislike of posh cunts in my formative years, Pulp’s fifth album was the soundtrack to my quiet fume. Jarvis Cocker was speaking to – and for – the likes of me.

“A lot of people remember Different Class as a classic Britpop album full of jaunty bangers, and I suppose it is. But to me it’s a bitter, angry, glorious, tragic, uplifting and unashamed celebration of being working class and all that entails.

“‘Common People’ is a clear standout, and resonated with me as I watched well-to-do classmates plebbing it up and dropping their T’s in order to play at being scally. ‘Mis-Shapes’ was even more on the nose with the lyric: ‘Oh, what’s the point of being rich/ If you can’t think what to do with it?/ ‘Cause you’re so bleedin’ thick’

“Whether it’s ‘Pencil Skirt” (sex), Sorted for E’s & Wizz’ (drugs) or ‘Something Changed’ (love), the message is clear – we don’t have much, but what we do have we fucking cherish. And every moment we steal out of life is a joy you’ll never know.

“I love Different Class because it helped me understand that things I was ashamed of should be fucking glorified – and that one day they’d help me stand out.”

ALBUM: E•MO•TION

ARTIST: Carly Rae Jepsen

Wil Jones, Multimedia Creator

“There is no better opening 10 seconds to an album than the saxophone at the start of ‘Come Away With Me’, and it sets the tone for the whole of E•MO•TION, 12 tracks of wonderful fun but also emotionally resonant pop music.

“Carly Rae Jepsen may have come to international fame with the infinitely delightful single ‘Call Me Maybe’, but it is her follow-up album that is her masterpiece. E•MO•TION is simply a collection of amazing, grown-up pop songs.

“Every song is smart, without ever being ironic. It is both retro and timeless at the same time. These are songs about the joy of love and flirting and fancying someone, that are innocent but never naive. It sounds like every song should soundtrack a 1990s Coke ad and have a faux VHS filter over the video.

“Look, it is just very great pop music and it makes me happy, and I’m sure ‘I Really Like You’ is loads more to listen to than any song off whatever Radiohead record you say is your favourite album to sound cool to your cool friends (I also love Radiohead).”

ALBUM: Rumours

ARTIST: Fleetwood Mac

Angela Kilgannon, Account Director 

“For some people deciding on their favourite album requires no thought but I find it a ridiculously hard question. I have loved and been obsessed with so many different albums at different points in my life, so deciding on one, not so easy. However I asked myself, ‘If I had to listen to one album for the rest of my life what would it be?’ Probably an unoriginal choice, but I’d have to go with Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.

“Rumours just stands out to me, it’s a perfect album which I love more and more with every listen. An album based around really real experiences of love and breakups, it’s hard not to feel the raw emotion, the highs and lows behind each song.

“My favourite song depends on my mood. Sometimes I listen to ‘Songbird’ and think it’s the most heartbreaking song, at other times, the most uplifting, her voice is so beautiful but so delicate too and you feel everything she does. ‘Go Your Own Way’ is the best fuck you breakup song. ‘Dreams’ and ‘Gold Dust Woman’, just brilliant Stevie Nicks songs.

“It’s an incredible album, a classic that I will never get bored of listening to.”

ALBUM: Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance

ARTIST: Belle and Sebastian

Jake Gallagher, Head of Social

“This is the album that you listen to during the comedown week after Glastonbury, or any other festival, that makes you outwardly emotional. This is the album that bring you to tears on the coach from Yeovil to London after a weekend in Berlin at Lollapalooza Festival. This is the album that you listen to in order to reflect, to be nostalgic for no reason. This album has depth, this album has a story, this album means a lot to me. Listen to it. Listen to it and listen, really listen, hear it, hear the words, the meaning.”

ALBUM: For Emma, Forever Ago

ARTIST: Bon Iver

Rebecca Fennelly, Head of Brand

“There is this wonderful quote by Stevie Wonder – he’s not my album choice, but he’s one of my favourite artists of all-time – it is about music, and it goes: ‘Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more memories we have of it.’

“For me, this applies for a lot of the music I love, but it couldn’t be more relevant for Bon Iver’s sublime For Emma. Forever Ago. I love this album like a dear friend, the definitive companion that is always there, in the background of the moments that are already beautiful, making them even more special and memorable. It has also been something I listen to when I need to think, process something. Reflect. Face the music.

“Every track is special for me, but to this day, I can’t listen to ‘Re: Stacks’ without getting butterflies in my tummy, and goosepimples up my arms. I’m not sure much else in the world has the same affect, but I am entirely okay with that.”

Today is National Album Day and music lovers from all over the UK will unite to celebrate the nation’s love of the iconic album. At 3.33pm everyone in the country is being asked to stop what they’re doing, sit back, relax and play an album of choice in full, from start to finish.  

Visit www.nationalalbumday.co.uk for more information.