Siamese Dream by The Smashing Pumpkins; the album that gave me the power to get through my teenage chaos years and forever find other ‘Pumpkin heads’ in life, making life long friends out of them.

Back from the times when you actually listened to an entire album, from start to finish over and over, reading and learning every lyric, knowing every lick and key change, Siamese Dream starts and finishes in the perfect way an album should.

Siamese Dream brought to my teenage soul and ears sounds that had been swirling around inside me before I ever knew they could be created. The layered guitar sounds from Billy Corgan and James Iha soothed my angst ridden soul like nothing else. The way The Smashing Pumpkins crept into my young ears atop my bunk bed in the afternoon sun as I poured over the CD booklet of gorgeous artwork with the best lyrics I’d ever read will forever be a deeply cherished memory in my heart.

I’ll never forget the day I bought it, I was only 15 and there was change left over from the grocery shopping. I thought I’d take a chance by sneaking into the CD shop before going back to meet my mother, praying she wouldn’t notice the $16.49 or so was missing… thank goodness she didn’t or chose not to!

Today was the first single from this second album by Smashing Pumpkins and it became an anthem for all of us guitar loving grungers back then. The hope in that track was something we needed; bursting guitar filled awe for new love found in hot summers and excited adventures to my first live music festivals wearing my grape converse hi-top runners with pink corduroy mini skirt and old 70s floral shirt!

Mayonnaise will always be my favourite track from the album because it captures the desperate pain of being young, feeling misunderstood and being so inexplicably sensitive to all that’s going on around you but not having the wisdom of age to deal with it properly. The visuals the lyrics convey also contribute to the perfection of the album. Billy’s lyric writing back in the 90s was truly at it’s peak; ‘While the harlots of my perils, Scream’ is a sublime snippet. Ending the track with the perfect grunge wail of ‘I just want to beeeeee meee’ carved a place in many a young person’s being back then and forever.

The coming together of the magic four: Billy Corgan, James Iha, Darcy Wretzky and Jimmy Chamberlain for this album, with these specific songs was a magnificent moment in music history and I am forever grateful it came to me when it did.

Siamese Dream by The Smashing Pumpkins, 1993. Chosen by DJ & Photographer Belle Piec

Bad was the very first album that I have a conscious memory of wanting to absorb in its entirety in the way that seems trivial these days; pouring over the fold out album booklet from my father’s cassette tape and consuming the videos on television over and over again.  Most people only seem to remember Bad as though it deserves only to be in the shadow of its unparalleled elder brother – which is still globally the biggest selling album of all time, of course.

I feel somewhat privileged as a 90’s baby, in that I was almost entirely unaware of the Thriller phenomenon and the long inevitable shadow it cast at this young age, because I was able to digest and love this record purely on its own merit. It made me want answers to questions that I couldn’t even know yet.

Yes, it may be yet another victim of the late 80s obsession with handclaps and no, it will not break records quite like Thriller, but it has a deep-rooted aesthetic and sound that feels, at least to me, much more deep-rooted in the story and identity of the man who made it. He was no longer covered in glitter and singing about phantom loves and heartbreaks they were never really his.

Bad is angry, demanding, immersive, and arguably pop’s first full ‘stadium album’.  With every hair-racing, electrifying, and in moments, furious bar of that record, we finally see Michael Jackson for who he is, and wanted to be, (rather than who he was taught to be):  articulate, sentimental, but also defiant in the face of The Man…  And, least of all, as one of the most stylish buggers to ever wear leather on leather!

Bad by Michael Jackson, 1987. Chosen by writer India Meade.

An influential album that means so much to me, even after twenty-three years, is Alanis Morrisette’s Jagged Little Pill.

Morrisette’s trailblazing third studio album, and international debut, spoke to me. It was angry, urgent and directive, supplying a poetic narrative for heartbreak and frustration and showing that female anger could be powerful.  A rebellion against the patriarchy – the kind of men who would “take a long hard look at your ass and then play golf for a while” – it gave women a voice, this time through alt-rock.

More so, it’s twelve tracks of really excellent music. Jagged Little Pill is one of the defining albums of the 1990s, and for me – of my life.

Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morrisette, 1995. Chosen by writer & journalist Nicola Greenbrook.

For National Album Day we’ve chosen Live Through This by Hole. Maybe an obvious choice, but we’d rather be honest than cool. Iconic female rock stars were (and still are) sadly under represented in music.

Courtney Love is the embodiment of a rock star, yet fiercely female. Her talent as a song writer is often overlooked as other parts of her life are given more attention. Certain behaviour is applauded and celebrated in male rock stars yet continues to this day to be frowned upon in her.

Hole are so important to us, as a female centric yet wildly commercially successful band. They’ve sold a tonne more albums than people often realise. Their legacy shows girls like us that it isn’t impossible. From the wildly iconic opening chords of Violet, Love’s poetic and raw lyrics on Live Through This, paints an often painfully honest portrait of the female experience.

You’ll be hard pressed to find many successful albums full of absolutely banging tunes that explore sexual exploitation, body image, pregnancy, motherhood, post natal depression, female rage and other experiences women can relate to in such a way. If you haven’t listened to it in a while, listen again.

Live Through This by Hole, 1994. Chosen by the band Babyteeth. Babyteeth are playing at Rockshot Mag’s night of Curated music at The Finsbury for #BlogtoberFest2018 on Wednesday 17th October 2018.