Most Influential Albums: Day One

I'm currently on a nearly two-month hiatus from Facebook, so that's not where I saw this challenge. Rather, I saw my sister's list on Instagram (which is a platform I still don't really get, by the way) and began thinking about what would be on my hypothetical list. I still don't really know how my list will fill out. I guess I'll figure it out as I go along. I'm blatantly breaking one of the rules of the challenge, which is that you're not supposed to explain. Well, what's the fun of that, especially if you're posting it on a blog?

Where it all started...

I think we inherit a lot of our musical taste from our parents. My dad always had a ready supply of music in the car when we were growing up, so that was where a lot of the early exposure took place. When I first began expressing an interest in music, he gave me Lionel Richie. I was probably about 10 years old and listened to Can't Slow Down quite a bit. All these songs are still in my head today. I only had to go to the internet to refresh my memory on one of the eight, but it came right back as soon as I heard it. At the time, "All Night Long (All Night)" seemed to be the ultimate dance party anthem, not that I ever danced. Can't Slow Down won the Grammy in 1985 for Album of the Year, spawned a pair of #1 hits, and eventually sold in excess of 20 million copies.

My dad was like an early version of a computer algorithm, because once it was established that I liked Lionel's stuff and I was ready for another artist, he gave me the Neil Diamond and Billy Ocean. But Lionel was my first love, and a couple of years later I made my first own-money album purchase - Dancing on the Ceiling. In later years as I combed through BMG and Columbia House catalogs, I would find these things classified as "Soft Rock" or "Easy Listening" - so yeah, I basically started out as a 40-year-old man when I probably should have been listening to Def Leppard or Van Halen.