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Culturally resonant: The Libertines debut album was 'raw and real'

Perfect performers: Olivia Newton John and John Travolta in Seventies classic Grease

Madge: Jo Whiley's favoured getting-ready artist

Joni Mitchell: a desert island favourite

Irresistible: Adam and the Ants

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What's your favourite album? It's a simple question, but I bet you're already making it difficult. A long-player immediately came into your head - one that you would gladly listen to any time, again and again, no matter your mood or environment - and you've rejected it.

You've started thinking about the album you ought to choose, the one that critics and fans' polls always say is the best album of all time. But ... you don't love it. It doesn't move you. It can't reach inside you and revive a whole set of buried emotions and memories of love won and lost, friendships kept and squandered, traumas endured and survived. How could it? That universally recognised classic was never a crucial part of your life. You only bought it because you were told to.

Our tiny island has constantly overachieved in the field of popular music since The Beatles era, and, because of the "cool" that pop has bestowed upon Brit culture, we are ridiculously self-conscious about our music taste. We're terrifiedof appearing naff, old or stupid when we confess that we prefer, say, Phil Collins to The Arctic Monkeys. Hence our willingness to go along with the Rock Pantheon - even when we would much rather buy that new Sugababes compilation than try, yet again, to "get" Nirvana.

It's the close personal bond that's important when picking your favourite album - for my latest book I picked 261. But if I were to have to choose just 10, they would be the ones that got me through my confused teens, and convinced me that music was my life. Albums expect to be partners for life. You'd need them, alone, on that desert island, and you'd need them to be both comforting and inspirational, just like the person you'd hope would get shipwrecked with you.

Maybe that's one trick that an iPod on random just can't pull off. So tell me again... just what is your favourite album?

Garry Mulholland's Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk and Disco is published by Orion.

GARRY MULHOLLAND
Author and critic

The Clash
The Clash (1977)
Their debut was a world-changer. A visionary snapshot of London in race and class turmoil, and the first album that obsessed me.

Roxy Music
Greatest Hits (1979)
The ironic, pop-art contrast to The Clash's realism, all aspirational sex, doomed romance and self-absorbed posing.

Elvis Costello and the Attractions
Armed Forces (1979)
Fascism, both general and personal, savagely explored over music that sounds like John Lennon guesting with Abba.

Public Image Ltd
Metal Box/Second Edition (1979)
All John Lydon's post-Sex Pistols nightmares exorcised, while his band melded funk, dub reggae and dark psychedelia.

Public Enemy
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988)
Black radical politics' greatest musical hour, as Chuck D and co co-opted rock and raged against Reaganism and racism.

The Smiths
The Smiths (1984)
Dodgy production couldn't dim the unique brilliance of this debut, a subtle concept album about lost innocence in the shadow of Manchester's Moors Murders.

Gang of Four
Entertainment! (1979)
The missing link between Karl Marx and The Matrix. With stunning guitars.

Echo & the Bunnymen
Heaven Up Here (1981)
Liverpool's lippiest post-punks wailed about drink, drugs and growing pains while twinning epic rock with edgy punk-funk.

The Slits
Cut (1979)
These west London feminist rastapunks only made one great album. But no one has matched their debut's dub-pop spirit of freedom and adventure.

Talking Heads
Fear of Music (1979)
A Brian Eno-produced third album, punk-funk masterpiece about the terror (and humour) induced by "air", "drugs", "cities" and life itself.

ALEX JAMES
Blur bassist

Grease
Original Soundtrack (1978)
The film woke up the man inside of me. They're just great songs, well performed.

Adam and the Ants
Kings of the Wild Frontier (1981)
Adam was a hero when I was 11, and this album was irresistible. It was scary and threatening, and had the sense of "Burn your house down! Go mental!"

New Order
Substance (1987)
The perfect counterculture record in the Eighties. In the middle of all those red Porsches and Tony Hadley spam, here was someone standing up saying "How does it feel?" It opened my heart to poetry.

Marianne Faithfull
Strange Weather (1987)
A bunch of classic standards, delivered by Marianne in her knackered baritone. It's very romantic. It sort of suggested that great things might be true.

Saturday Night Fever
Original Soundtrack (1977)
The universal sound of people having a good time. It's amazing how many brilliant moments of my life have had the Gibb brothers in the background.

Roy Orbison
Greatest Hits (2003)
I've got no problem with greatest hits collections - I'm not a purist. Roy is just the greatest songwriter. His melodies are as good as anything anyone's ever written.

Boney M
Night Flight to Venus (1978)
I haven't seen the musical - I just want to dance to Daddy Cool. Fun time pop and quality bubblegum.

Rossini
William Tell Overture (1829)
I loved this this when I was 10 and still love it. A super-fast and sophisticated melody but easily digestible. He rocks, Rossini.

Hejira
Joni Mitchell (1976)
Why would you want to listen to the Sugababes when you can listen to Joni? This record proves that it's better being 38 than 19.

Eddie Harris
Instant Death (1970)
A cool-cat trumpet player from the Sixties and Seventies; this is my middle-aged hipster record. As a bass player, the grooves are just really good time and again.

NICKY WIRE
Manic Street Preachers' bassist

Everything But the Girl
Baby the Stars Shine Bright (1986)
The album I fell in love to, with the girl I'm still married to. It has a really lush sound. Back then Tracey Thorn was every indie boy's dream.

The Clash
The Clash (1977)
I love this for its crudeness. Richie [Edwards, fellow Manic] and I spent a whole summer spray-painting clothes to it, hatching revolutions. And Paul Simenon became my hero.

Dexy's Midnight Runners
Searching for the Young Soul Rebels (1980)
Dexy's were obsessed with manifestos, with trying to attain something you never will. That really struck a chord.

McCarthy
I am a Wallet (1987)
The most political band that's ever existed - their dissection of Thatcher's Britain came from a completely different angle from the boring Red Wedge movement.

NWA
Straight Outta Compton (1988)
If Public Enemy were the Clash, NWA were the Sex Pistols, full of nihilistic outrage, bent on destruction. Brutally harsh.

Rush
Moving Pictures (1981)
A fantastic record from a time when rock was in its death throes.

Echo & the Bunnymen
Ocean Rain (1981) The most poetic band of the Eighties. This made you feel good to be an outsider.

The Boo Radleys
Giant Steps (1993)
A sprawling double album, full of amazing melodies - the indie equivalent of The Beatles' White Album.

Blur
13 (1999)
A really dark and dense record - Blur sound like a band who are teetering on the edge. By this time, I'd realised Damon Albarn was pretty much the modern David Bowie.

The Libertines
Up the Bracket (2002)
I'd have loved this record if was 15. As it is, I think it's the last album that really resonated culturally. Raw and real.

The Manic Street Preachers' Everything Must Go: 10th Anniversary Edition is out now on Sony BMG.

JO WHILEY
Radio 1 DJ

Back II
Black Various (2001)
A bit of a cheat: the complete history of black music from Paul Robeson to Prince. I could get by on this alone.

Saturday Night Fever
Original Soundtrack (1977)
It has everything: disco, classical, pop, smooching songs. I still have the vinyl I bought when I was small.

Massive Attack
Blue Lines (1991)
The comedown after the night before. It reminds me of meeting my husband - the mad times, then finding something really special.

Johnny Cash
American IV The Man Comes Around (2002)
He resonates more as you get older. All those old songs really remind me of my grandad. Makes me want to cry.

Bright Eyes
I'm Wide Awake It's Morning (2005)
I really love Bright Eyes. When you're feeling really pathetic and lost and lonely, he just lets you wallow.

Green Day
International Superhits (2001)
A band I return to again and again, for their pure cathartic value. Put Basketcase on when you're pissed off.

Arctic Monkeys
Whatever People Say I Am That's What I'm Not (2006)
My favourite of the past five years. It captures perfectly the rush of being a teenager - and it's heartbreaking at times, too.

Bob Marley
Exodus (1977)
A proper holiday album. If you're in the most amazing mood ever, it's the one to put on.

Van Morrison
Moondance (1970)
I have come to love all that poetry.

Madonna
The Immaculate Collection (1990)
Reminds me of so many great evenings, getting ready, dancing in the bedroom. Pure celebration.

Jo Whiley's new show, In Live Music We Trust, is at 9pm-10pm on Tuesdays. Her weekday show is from 10am-1pm.

JAMES MORRISON
Singer-songwriter

Moondance
Van Morrison (1970)
Van Morrison is so distinctive. As soon as you hear that white, Irish soul voice, you know who it is.

The Headphone Masterpiece
Cody Chestnutt (2003)
This album is quite lo-fi, guitarbased hip-hop. It's very rude in places, but when he gets it right, he nails it.

Stevie Wonder
Songs in the Key of Life (1976)
It's hard to single out one Stevie Wonder album among such a great collection but this has the most variety.

Nirvana
Nevermind (1991)
My mum used to clean the house to this when I was small. It was too heavy for me at the time, but when I turned 12, it suddenly all clicked.

Donnie Hathaway
Live (1972)
The whole album is full of class songs: his voice is just a killer.

Toots and the Maytals
The Collection (2006)
Every time you put this on you just want to bop your head to it and smile.

Michael Jackson
Off the Wall (1979)
I know he's weird, but he's done so much for music. Him and Quincy Jones just make magic together.

Sublime
Greatest Hits (1999)
A great Californian ska-punk band with a really creative attitude.

Jimi Hendrix
Are You Experienced? (1967)
I love how raw and dirty this is - even the mistakes are legendary. I can only dream of playing like Hendrix.

Cat Stevens
Teaser and the Firecat (1971)
My dad used to play this when I was a kid, so it takes me right back. Just high-class songwriting.

Undiscovered by James Morrison is out now on Universal.

INTERVIEWS BY RICHARD GODWIN

 

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