Every home should have one X

Reading Khayem's post today on the always-excellent Dubhed, regarding The Anchoress's cover of Enjoy The Silence, it suddenly occurred to me that I had somehow omitted a very important album from the EHSHO masterlist. Specifically, Depeche Mode's 1990 high watermark, Violator.

Since Khayem has already featured Silence, here's another example of what makes this album so bloody good.

And to prove that it's the very definition of all killer, no filler, here's another track from Violator but this time one that wasn't also a top twenty hit in the singles chart. Sweetest Perfection is, on the face of it, all about a doomed love for the perfect (but wrong) woman ... but is really bleaker still, a doomed love for a darker but equally addicting drug. It's all persistent minor chords, hammer-blow drums and jagged industrial synth noises - the brightly-suited, fresh-faced Basildon boys of Just Can't Get Enough are a distant memory.

I played Violator to death in the early 90s. I think it is Depeche Mode's best album, and thoroughly deserves its place in every home.

For completeness, you can find the Every Home Should Have One masterlist here.

Every home should have one IX

No Ides of March nonsense here, just the remediation of a massive and long-standing oversight on my part with regard to the albums that no home should be without. Yes, it's another compilation album, but it's one of the greatest multi-act compilation albums ever released, by anyone, at any time. Buying this on cassette, way back when, was such a significant moment in retrospect, introducing me to a slew of new bands by the weight of association with bands I already loved. And tracks that, in the pre-Internet age of my youth, I might never have heard otherwise. How can I have overlooked This Are Two Tone for quite so long? EHSHO masterlist duly updated.

And because it still sounds fantastic, here's The Selecter with their eponymous B-side:

Every home should have one VIII

Prompted by a recent post by Charity Chic, it suddenly occurred to me that I'd omitted Fannies masterpiece Songs From Northern Britain from the EHSHO masterlist. What was I thinking?

Every home should have one, part (magnificent) 7

Can't believe I missed this from these. What was I thinking?

Every home should have one, episode VI

In which I continue to remember, or am reminded of, albums that I missed from these.

Every home should have one V

In which I continue to remember, or am reminded of, albums that I missed from these. Mopping up some obvious essentials, with a bunch of compilations and some career highs:

Every home should have one, episode 4

In which I continue to remember, or am reminded of, albums that I missed from these. Here are some more essentials:

Still no Boss, Rol. You'll need to pitch an album to me, otherwise I'll just end up with a compilation...

Every home should have one, part the third

In which I continue to remember, or am reminded of, albums that I missed from the original post and yesterday's part deux. Here are some more essentials:

Am also starting to wonder whether I was right to allow "best of" compilations, but too late to change now...

Every home should have one, part deux

Following on from yesterday's post, in which it quickly became apparent that distilling a shortlist of must-have albums is very difficult, here are some additions to yesterday's list of 30. Some are from the comments, some are from me. So basically this is every home should have one, part two:

Every home should have one

I've ummed and aahed for some time over the idea of a blog theme along the lines of "albums every home should own". But it's such a difficult concept to attempt, being so subjective and so hard to be exhaustive. Let's face it, I'm exhausted.

So I'm going to cheat, with an in-no-particular order collage of albums that I think every home should own. It's not exhaustive, of course - I'll think of others later that I should have included. Of course "best of" compilations are allowed (my gaff, my rules). I have limited myself to only one album per artist though...

... but what have I missed? What would you nominate for inclusion here? And have I got the right album for the artist?