David Bowie – Young Americans
This represents Iggy and Lou Reed as well, as those three are - as for many, many others - a pyramid of people that was everything for a second and then still is in many ways. Bowie was one of the very first things that I started listening to on my own, probably when I was 10 or 11 and I had acquired Hunky Dory. I would lie in bed every night and listen to it and couldn't fall asleep because I knew that 'Andy Warhol' would eventually come up. The intro has very scary sounds on it - when you're only 10-years-old you're very susceptible to those because everything is completely new and you don't know the limits of what music might be. Each night I would enjoy the music but be in perpetual fright because I knew this intro would come and leave me immobile in my bed. Then going on I worked my way through his discography and each record would be an introduction to a new palate of musical elements. Some of these I found great and some I found unlikeable and then later on I found those unlikeable elements to be great and some of the things I once thought great to be unlikeable, which is a sign of a great artist. It was a couple of years later that I got to Young Americans. I barely cry, but I remember putting on the title track and there's that breakdown where he goes, 'Ain't there one damn song that can make me break down and cry?' and that second it just triggered something.