As we approach National Album Day on 15th October, you may be wondering, what are the best debut albums? Or more specifically, what are the favourite debut albums of the writers at Gear4music? Well, you’re in luck! Keeping with this year’s theme, Celebrating Debut Albums, we have each delved into our music catalogues and chosen our favourites.
But what is National Album Day? In its fifth year now, this annual occasion celebrates the album format through limited-edition products and events, such as listening parties and Q&As.
Partnering with BBC Sounds and Bowers & Wilkins, this year’s celebration is not one to be missed – and there are plenty of ways to get involved, whether that’s through sharing #NationalAlbumDay on social media or attending in-store live music performances.
Read on to discover our full list of favourite debut albums.
Ten tracks of catchy, rock-goodness! Permission to Land by The Darkness
By Toop Harris
Favourite debut album? The easiest question to answer!
My favourite debut album is Permission to Land by The Darkness. I was hooked the first time I heard this album at 16. Having grown up with my mum liking glam rock and a Jamaican dad who liked reggae and ska, and going along with what friends liked, this album was the first time I actually broke away from the norm. It was music that I personally liked, and it blew my mind!
There was something about Justin Hawkins’ falsetto that stood out – not to mention the big rock riffs and fun lyrics. The album is unique, and the band weren’t afraid to do something different – catsuits and the lot! My favourite track is “Givin’ Up”, an upbeat song with amusing, ‘narcotic’ lyrics.
As a fully invested Darkness fan… sporting a Permission to Land hoody and Frankie Poullain-inspired bandana at 16 (cringing, I know), I literally listened to this album every day for a whole year! It also came at the time when I was just starting out on bass, so I learnt every bassline too! I was obsessed with this album, and I feel sorry for my mum, dad… and next-door neighbours!
Van Halen’s Van Halen 1
By Cory Young
Nothing more can be said about this album that hasn’t already been said. But I’ll try.
Reshaping everything about what rock and roll meant in all the ways you can imagine, VH1 split the timeline of guitar-playing and rock music in two. Now, you had everything before and everything after Van Halen. Everything that came after was a sea of carbon copy bands trying to imitate their success. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, though none had the Midas touch that would see them come close.
The songwriting on VH1 is phenomenal and exactly what rock and roll should be. Even if stripped of all the flashy guitar FX or production aesthetic, the songs on VH1 translate to any instrument in any genre. That’s the sign of a good tune. From the swing of “I’m The One” to the catchiest hook in all of rock on “Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love”, every song has the instant replay factor.
Appropriately in my eyes, one of the highest-selling albums of all time and still charting in the Billboard Top 200 as recently as 2020 – some 42 years after its release, this will always be the greatest debut album.
Idris Bena’s Lankivei
My pick for National Album Day is Lankivei by Idris Bena. This album journeys through experimental ambient, euphoric breakbeats and mellow trap to punchy, clubby tech house, all in 14 tracks.
I own the vinyl LP and play it both in DJ sets and at home for personal listening. The music on the album is incredibly diverse and there are just as many bangers as there are deep, mood-cleansing delights.
Idris Bena is a Parisian who is very humble about his music. I met him at an event in London and he told me that music is a way of expressing himself and this album conveys his music taste, moods, and general personality in the same way non-verbal based electronic music can.
I really love grass roots and personal music productions that mean something to both the author and listener, that’s why Lankivei is my favourite debut album.
My top three tracks are “Sunset philosophy”, “Rosa”, and “Pieces Back”. I’ve chosen these because they each represent the diversity of the LP. It’s a fantastic French electronic music experience.
The timeless Psychodrama by Dave
By Aidan Whelband
In 2019, British hip-hop artist Dave released the Mercury Prize-winning debut album Psychodrama.
The album, which takes the listener through a psychotherapy session, was met with huge critical acclaim and commercial success.
Covering topics such as mental health in “Pyscho” and “Voices”, fame in “Environment”, and Dave’s upbringing in “Screwface Capital” and “Streatham”, all 11 tracks act as a window into Dave’s tumultuous and unique life. This album has some incredibly poignant lyrics, and Dave repeatedly delivers impactful soliloquies with outstanding conviction.
“Black”, the second track, is an incredibly powerful song in which Dave expresses pride in his heritage. However, my favourite track is “Lesley” which is an 11-minute-long masterwork that tells a tragic story of a woman trapped in an abusive relationship.
This album is timeless and incredibly important, and I feel in years to come it will be looked at as a seminal album of 2010s British music. It’s one that I’ll never tire of listening to, and the only one I could have picked for National Album Day.
Illmatic by Nas
By Imogen Bellamy
Creative Commons License by The Come Up Show
Nas’ Illmatic is iconic – it’s rare to see a list of best debut albums without it, and for good reason.
A twentieth-century successor to the oral tradition, Nas developed lyrical rap while building on the classics. The result is a work that would inspire East Coast hip-hop and the genre as a whole for years to come.
Illmatic achieves a timeless combination of warmth and grit throughout its samples; however, Nas’ poetry steals the show.
The rhythm flows like a wave, assonance and enjambment carrying you through a series of tableaus depicting the anxieties and realities of growing up in Queensbridge. Poverty, drug abuse, and violence are recurring themes, yet there’s a pervasive optimism throughout.
Vocal clarity and a lilting cadence provide an easy listening experience, while the content has been subjected to literary analysis.
Illmatic didn’t attain the immediate commercial success of some contemporary albums, but it was well-received among reviewers and musicians. Described as “rhythmic perfection” by NME, it obtained The Source’s only 5-microphone rating for a debut album.
Different producers for different tracks, samples drawing across multiple genres, and Nas’ lyrical genius combine for a flawless first LP. Over two decades later its influence can still be felt.
Robbie Williams’ Life Thru a Lens
By Mark Roberts
Fresh out of his exile from Take That, a young Robbie Williams embarked on a daunting solo project. It was a turbulent beginning that saw him battling addiction and trying to create his own musical identity, separate from the band that launched his career.
The result was 1997’s Life Thru a Lens, my pick for National Album Day. Remember that album? Probably not, but I’m willing to bet you remember at least one of the songs from it…
That was, of course, Robbie’s smash hit, “Angels”. A song that’s been heard at countless weddings, the end of the night at pubs, and for those poor souls unfortunate enough to attend karaoke, it’s an instant shot of nostalgia.
Paired with “Let Me Entertain You” – a rock ballad that has me screeching into an air microphone while assuming a power pose, the album takes you right back the days of pop yore.
Together with these two headliners, the title track “Life Thru a Lens” is particularly reminiscent of ’90s Brit Pop sharpness, and still gets me bopping to this day, despite being long forgotten compared to the bigger hits.
As one of the first albums I ever listened to (and can remember), the final single from it instantly has me donning the rose-tinted glasses. “Old Before I Die” is a wistful tune that transports me to the ’90s and the first steps of discovering music.
The birth of neo-soul: Baduizm by Erykah Badu
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This is a tough one, there are lots of magnificent debuts out there – but my pick for National Album Day would have to be Erykah Badu’s Baduizm. By far the most confident debut I’ve ever heard, this is an album that’s largely credited with the birth of neo-soul.
Afrofuturist and feminist themes are subtly yet assertively addressed throughout; Badu performs a balancing act between simplicity and complexity that has been mastered by so few.
The whole thing is tied together by an incredible vocal performance and delivered with the confidence of an artist that has decades of experience in the showbiz industry.
For me, what’s so magic about it is the space that she leaves unfilled – all the instrumentation is delicate in its simplicity and somehow still endlessly complex – everything seems to come so easily to her.
It’s also personal, with a couple of deep cuts that explore her relationship with Outkast rapper Andre 3000, offering an interesting insight into two generational talents’ interpersonal relationship and the trials of their upbringing.
It’s a real winter warmer and prime example of self-assuredness personified within a musical project.
Bjork’s Debut
By Max Cunliffe
Riding the wave of international popularity, it becomes apparent from the start of Debut that Bjork seeks a departure from the hard-edged sounds of The Sugarcubes.
After moving to London in 1993, Bjork found the sound she’d been looking for: a foray through underground dance music, characterised by hardcore beats and cutting aggressive timbres. All the while Bjork retains a playful personality over the intense hypnosis of the dancefloor with a sense of curious experiment.
“If you ever get close to a human, and human behaviour, be ready, be ready to get confused. There’s definitely, definitely, definitely no logic to human behaviour.” And there’s definitely logic to Bjork’s abstract take on popular music. Frolicking through the sensual yet constantly perplexing human world, this new world of underground dance music, of sweating, heaving bodies under lightshows and lasers, a world without logic, is expressed beautifully through Bjork’s startlingly dynamic voice.
Debut takes me through a reminiscence of awkward club nights. Nights filled with music that captures something I love about the underground, and people that can be difficult to understand at first. Bjork reminds us to approach humans, and human behaviour, with a sense of playful curiosity, and to express ourselves as true to our passions.
Chic’s self-titled debut
By Jacob Cooper
Creative Commons License by Jmex
There are few artists who have helped shape popular music in the way that Nile Rodgers has.
Back where it all started in 1977, Chic’s self-titled debut album was the first showcase of the brilliant musical partnership between Rodgers and bassist and co-writer, Bernard Edwards.
Released just as disco music was entering the mainstream, the album has huge historic significance. Hits such as Everybody Dance and Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah) have stood the test of time and are still a staple of Chic’s live set to this day!
It’s an album full of joy that somehow doesn’t succumb to being overshadowed by its monumental hits.
Chic follows a similar formula to many of their albums that followed: a short track list with an upbeat and catchy opener, a few stone-cold classics, a few slower, jazz-inspired tracks, and a few that make you think ‘why wasn’t this a hit?’.
There truly are no bad songs on this record, it’s the perfect celebration of all the genres that inspired disco music and made it so culturally significant.
Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside
An easy choice, Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside takes the top spot, for me, as debut albums go. A lesson in femininity and the inner workings of Kate Bush’s mind, it’s hard to believe the album was released when she was just 19.
As well as including the iconic “Wuthering Heights” – a song that immediately makes anyone want to float around in a red dress and flail their arms around, the album is filled to the brim with playful, superbly-written, introspective songs.
It opens with “Moving”, an ode to her dance teacher, and finishes with “The Kick Inside”, a song inspired by traditional folk song “Lucy Wan”. And in between, we travel to a Berlin bar (“The Saxophone Song”), delve into the rushing, tumultuous feelings of being in love (“Oh to Be in Love”), and learn of Bush’s desires to escape the self-consciousness that plagues her as a teenager (“Kite”).
Each track is tied to the next with a sense of Kate Bush’s innocent wonder and curiosity as she approaches adolescence – and that’s what makes the album so interesting and endearing.
The Kick Inside is a masterpiece, and it serves as the perfect introduction to the weird world of Kate Bush. There is no other debut album I could have chosen to celebrate National Album Day.
Neutral Milk Hotel’s On Avery Island
By Rowan Evans
Walls and walls of distorted acoustic guitar. Dense, cryptic lyrics that wind down deep rabbit holes. On Avery Island is Neutral Milk Hotel’s debut album and was unlike anything I’d ever heard before when I first put it on around ten years ago.
I’d already listened to their better-known sophomore effort, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, before this. I had thought; this is a noisy, abrasive album, how can anything of theirs be any more chaotic?
On Avery Island, while not as refined as its successor, is raw, fuzzy indie folk at its best.
The whole album has a lo-fi feel, opening with distorted wails leading into studio chatter. Then it launches into the first song – “Song Against Sex” – fit with an optimistic melody, brass section, and stirring tempo
As noisy and exciting as the production is – spearheaded by visionary Robert Schneider – it all comes back to the songwriting for me.
Jeff Mangum has an uncanny ability to write line after line of memorable lyrics set to memorable melodies: “I’m watching Naomi, full bloom // I’m hoping she will soon explode // Into one billion tastes and tunes” on “Naomi”, for example.
I always find a new favourite line every time I listen to this album.
And to go back to the noise, this album ends with a 13-minute instrumental that sounds like the world collapsing. So, you’ve got that to look forward to if you take a listen.
Get stuck in with National Album Day 2022!
Maybe one of these debut album choices has taken your fancy, maybe you’ve been reminded of one long forgotten, or maybe you just trust us to have supremely good music taste! Either way, hopefully we’ve inspired you to make use of your turntable and celebrate National Album Day.
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