Emily Onofrio //
Free Willy Soundtrack
I’m sure the orchestral pieces are as majestic as the whale himself, but I only remember listening to two songs on this entire album– track one, a Michael Jackson original, and track two, “Keep On Smiling” by New Kids on the Block. As you can imagine, I had no one to sing along with, but I still maintain that orcas are cooler than boy bands.
Daniel Schiffer //
Sugar Ray - 14:59
You only get one and I’m not ashamed to say that Sugar Ray’s 14:59 is the first album I ever owned. Growing up, I didn’t listen to much music. I didn’t have cable until the 8th grade and I barely ever listened to the radio (I know, I’m a weird dude). But I got 14:59 for my 9th birthday and I fell in love. I have vivid memories of blasting it on repeat in my living room while playing N64 without a care in the world. Oh how those were the days! Listening to it now, I have to say that I still think it’s pretty awesome. Two things really stand out: 1) I remember almost all of the words so if anyone wants to challenge me, come see me; 2) Sugar Ray really packed a lot of variety into this album (metal, punk, ska, pop!). They were once an alternative metal band so that explains some of it.
Laura Brubaker //
Fellowship of the Ring Soundtrack
I remember when my dad handed me the plastic bag containing a half-off copy of the Fellowship soundtrack. I remember the ecstasy and sense of grave purpose that mixed beneath my bosom when I — much like Frodo bearing the Ring out of the Shire for the first time — took the CD to our new Honda Element to stick it in the CD player as we drove who knows where. It could have been to Mordor (strike out) New Jersey, it could have been to the grocery store. It didn’t matter because even though my parents hadn’t let me see the movie yet, from the first measure of those heavy-ass strings in the opening track, I was whisked away on an imagination frenzy so severe that it wasn’t until tenth grade that someone could safely mention hobbits or Sindarin around me without fearing that I’d hijack the conversation like Haradrim on an Oliphaunt. I’d been waiting my whole life for this, from the first time my mom sat in that kiddie pool in the sweltering Philadelphia summer and read “When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday…” to the little clump of bump in her stomach, to the time when that bump read those words again in third grade, and almost peed when that unredeemingly nerdy child saw the preview on the TV for the first time… this was the Holy Grail. And I can still tell you what all the Elvish means.
Brittany Bosacker //
Britney Spears - Baby One More Time
My first CD was undoubtedly a classic: Britney Spears’ ..Baby One More Time. I remember wanting to be her (We had the same name after all). But, let’s be real – it wasn’t just me. Every girl wanted to be Britney Spears – all cute and “innocent” in her little schoolgirl outfit. I think about 80% of the female population (and maybe roughly 4% of the male population) was a Britney Spears schoolgirl for Halloween for the next 2-3 years following her debut single. My friends and I spent our weekends making up dances to Britney songs. We idolized her. Although, from the moment Britney entered the spotlight, she caused controversy; parents didn’t want their little girls prancing around, bearing their midriff, trying to look all sexy while singing along to lyrics which we all know have a sexual undertone. (“Hit me baby one more time”? Really? ) But it’s not like things have gotten much better… years later, I see 10 year old girls singing along to Ke$ha’s “Tick Tock,” holding iPhones and dressing like baby prostitutes. I’m thinking Britney Spears wasn’t such a bad role model after all. She was a teen icon of my childhood; she really had it all. After the break-up with Justin though (wutta hunk), things sort of went downhill for Britney… (Not rly, it was more after K. Fed, I think, but wutever.) She ditched the pseudo- innocent look fast (and we all kinda loved it, especially that “I’m a Slave 4 U” music video – don’t lie). I personally think I lost hope after she shaved her head on the street while having an extremely public mental breakdown. Nonetheless, Britney remains a cultural icon. Her first album is a novelty of our generation’s past, and, despite her iffy moments, Britney continues to produce several booty poppin’ hits… post-schoolgirl days.
Cheryl Rafuse //
Smash Mouth - Astro Lounge
I legitimately begged my parents for this album. I had the unhealthiest obsession with it. I listened to it every single day on one of those old CD/tape/radio players you get from WalMart. I’d dance around my room and do what any 9 year old girl would do: I choreographed incredibly embarrassing dances to the entire album. The second album (and in my opinion the best) released by the band, had some real winners on it, aside from the obvious hit, ‘All Star,’ which hit the top ten Billboard 100 at number 4. I remember fast forwarding and rewinding to get to “Then The Morning Comes,” and having the time I had to hold down the buttons memorized. Oh cassette tapes.
Nate Thompson //
Smash Mouth - Fush Yu Mang
I got really excited to write about Smash Mouth’s Fush Yu Mang, the first CD I purchased with my hard-earned cash, until I realized that I have memories from before CDs. Unfortunately, the first album I was given was, at the risk of dating myself, the soundtrack from the film “Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls.” On cassette. Woof. Checking out the track list on Amazon, there is something for everyone. “Boll Weevil” by The Presidents of the United States of America has got to be my favorite, a rhythmic jam from one of the most eccentric rock bands ever. There’s some thrash rock from White Zombie. The Police even get a track on here, with the underrated “Spirits in the Material World.” Montel Jordan has a jock jam for the ages, and Blues Traveler, the band you hate to love, featured the quirky “Secret Agent Man.” Yeah, you forgot they covered that too. This album is hysterical; a relic of second string songs from popular bands of the Reagan-Clinton era that form a compilation as weird as the film itself.
Ellie Molitor //
Shania Twain - Come On Over
I was lucky enough to grow up next door to my best friend, Jackie ‘Lettuce Lung’ Lundell, who, as an only child, forced her parents to invite me everywhere they went (she never had many friends). We spent many a summer’s weekend bothering her parents from the backseat of their maroon Ford Explorer (named Julie, lord knows why) as they drove three and a half hours out of Chicago and into the land of cheese, dairy, and everything merry to a little lake-side cottage. On one of these trips, Jackie and I were dicking around the isles of our favorite gas station, Petro, and her father approached us with two CDs in hand. Since I was the ‘guest,’ I got to pick first, leaving Lettuce Lung in the dust with a half-off copy of a compilation album of all the James Bond movie themes. I, on the other hand, was the proud new owner of Shania Twain’s Come on Over. Betch was pissed.
Matthew Shelter //
Boby Dylan - Desire
Bob Dylan, Desire — I’m way older (and cooler) than most of my fellow AP’ers, so my first album was, of course, way older (and cooler) than theirs. I got Bob Dylan’s Desire when I was in 8th grade. My mother said I should get a greatest hits album since I was just starting out, but I wanted Desire because of its classic opening track, the 8-1/2 minute “Hurricane,” Dylan’s impassioned lament for jailed middle-weight boxer Reuben Carter. I lived not far from the NJ town where the triple murder Carter was accused of had taken place, and felt a thrill every time Dylan sang about the cops “…with their red lights flashing in the hot New Jersey night.” I can still recite every verse of that long song many years down the road. Desire was a bit uneven – certainly not Dylan’s best album – but it had a handful of other good tracks, including “Isis,” “Mozambique,” “One More Cup of Coffee,” and “Sara.” Now, the second album I ever owned was way more embarrassing, and shall never be discussed. Let’s just say the artist’s name rhymes with Marry Banilow.
Emily Schadt //
Pauk McCartney - Flaming Pie
In 1997, while I was busy being an awkwardly skinny 9-year-old, my dad was working hard to cultivate the seed of good music taste in my tiny, prepubescent noggin. As my memory serves me, it was a day like any other when I opened the CD from my dad that would mark the beginning of my music collection. It was Paul McCartney’s Flaming Pie album. I was a young Beatles enthusiast but I had no idea about the make up and history of the band. So naturally I had no idea who the hell Paul McCartney was, but grew to like the album.
My old man chooses his moves wisely—first introducing me to the Beatles, then to the man-the myth-the legend front man of the Beatles, and then using this album to introduce contributing artists like Steve Miller and Jeff Lynne of ELO. Although it received good reviews for its time, Flaming Pie is by no means a stand out album. Tragically, my next CD purchase was the soundtrack to Titanic, but I guess that analysis will just have to wait.
Carolyn Vallejo //
Lyte Funky Ones
When I was about 7, I carried around a blue Sony portable CD player everywhere I went and it always had one CD in it: The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night. This ‘first album’ makes me look totally cool, like a young protégée of my mother and her hippy wonder years. Unfortunately, Allston Pudding wants to know the first album we ever “owned”, I’m assuming as in “paid for,” not the first album we ever snagged from our parents’ record collections So technically, it was the self-titled from the band LFO, the officially-named Lyte Funky Ones. This album was a platinum-earning collection of heart-melting love songs like “Every Other Time” and “Girl on TV,” which was performed live during an episode of the Amanda Show one year (totes jelly, Amanda). It’s not the most respectable first-purchase, but if anything, LFO was one of the earliest educational experiences of my youth. At the time, I had no idea just how many sonnets Billy Shakespeare wrote (a whole bunch), or what kind of a man Paul Revere really was (good), or the documented agricultural and social demographics of the state of Georgia (peaches are the local cash crop, drinking lemonade is a social pastime, and the regional patterns of dialect include speaking “real slow”). I’m a better person for it. R.I.P., Rich Cronin.
Christa Metropolis //
*NSYNC - *NSYNC
My first album was *NSYNC’s self-titled back in ’97. That was when my crush on Lance Bass started. He was just the “shy” one who wanted to be an astronaut. How could you not love him? I remember kissing the pictures of him in the liner notes and writing about him in my journal for Miss Albrecht’s 2nd grade class. I may have seen the movie On the Line more times than any person should and for a brief period of time I had an aim screen name that was “lancelvr91.” Yeah, that was a very weird phase of my life.
That entire album was full of hits that will never get old but “Tearin’Up My Heart” was definitely my favorite. That music video was great. They were just bros being bros doing choreographed dance moves while primping for a photo shoot. Ok, looking back now I don’t know how I was surprised.
James Molinaro //
Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman
I’m not sure what exactly possessed me to pick this album up, but from the drum lead-in to “Over the Mountain,” I was thoroughly hooked. I’ve been listening to metal ever since, which my mother blames for all the poor decisions I’ve made since age 9 or so.
Neil Patch //
Spider Man Soundtrack
Until the age of twelve, I didn’t listen to music the way real people listen to music. I have no idea why, but music had never taken hold of me in the way that nearly every other person on the planet experiences. That changed on a sixth grade trip when I noticed how everyone else had CD players with them for the bus ride, bobbing along under chunky and uncomfortable looking headphones. On the first day of my music class from that year, our teacher had everyone go around and name their favorite band or artist and the typical early 2000s acts popped up. When it was my turn, I said that I didn’t listen to music. My incredulous instructor (Mr. Tirelli) looked on with a face since duplicated only by those who catch a bad whiff of the MBTA tunnels. As embarrassment raced through my body, I quickly mumbled something about The Beatles…and it was onto the next kid. Thus, when I had my epiphany on the bus, I knew I had to have a Discman for my own.
The following weekend I went to the local Target and picked out the cheapest one I could find (which I still have somewhere, a grey Memorex cast in rubbarized material with blue plastic surrounding the display and buttons). And yet, I had made a crucial error: I needed to buy a CD. That part hadn’t even crossed my mind even though it’s the entire point of owning a CD player. But which piece of plastic would I choose? Resolute, I shuffled over to the racks (on racks) of shrink wrapped plastic squares and began to scan the titles. I couldn’t make up my mind, mostly due to the monumental decision it was to spend at least another $15 on a package whose contents were an utter mystery. Then I noticed something familiar: Spider-Man’s movie poster adorning shelf space and the title Music from and Inspired by Spider-Man. I probably thought some variation of, “If worst came to worst, that ‘Hero’ song by Chad Kroeger was pretty cool, right?” My reasoning must have been that if I liked the film, then I would also like the music–a flimsy assumption at best, but the greatest one I’ve ever made.
I took the plunge and bought the thing, opened it upon arriving home, and began to listen that night. For a while it was my only CD due to the problems outlined above, and, expectedly, I played it a lot. Over and over, for days and weeks. Looking back, about 90% of the songs are audible shit (aside from The Hives’ submission). However, because I was essentially going into this thing tabula rasa, I had no way of judging the quality of each track. Out of this mire emerged one songs that had inexplicably risen to the top of the heap, “When It Started” by The Strokes off of their debut album Is This It which had been released the previous summer. “When It Started” is considered by many to be the weakest song on their first record. Nevertheless, I thought “When It Started” was incredible without any particular reason for believing it so. I soon went out to buy Is This It in full and became obsessed. I started researching the band online, frequented their message board, and began the now life-long process of finding more music similar to what I liked. By the time Mr. Tirelli’s class met again in the fall of 2002, my submission for our “compare two musicians” project featured The Strokes on one side and The Ramones on the other.
Christine Varriale //
Third Eye Blind - Third Eye Blind
When approached with this feature, I was truly hoping that the first album I owned would be an embarrassing one. I asked my mom to purchase me a lot of gems in the year 1997, but in all honesty, my first album was Third Eye Blind’s self titled. At the age of seven, I heard “Semi- Charmed Life” on the radio and fell in love. Everywhere I went, I was singing “doo doo doo doo doo doo doo” in my head and, to the dismay of many adults, aloud. I didn’t know any of the other words or care to learn them. I started to branch out in the album a bit and added “Jumper” to my “playlist” as well. Both of these songs hit on hard topics: crystal meth addiction and suicide, respectively. I had no idea. I just loved the catchy beats. It took me about eight years to truly appreciate the album for its genius. “Graduate” became my anthem for both my high school and college graduations. I can’t even get into my love for “Motorcyle Drive By.” At seven years old, I wasn’t bothered with lyrics or deep meanings. Music was a much simpler connection for me back in my younger years.
Brian Sanderson //
Pokemon Soundtrack
This is the first album I remember having as my own. It was definitely the first album I ever bought, having just purchased the movie on VHS. I remember rocking out so hard to Vitamin C, Aaron Carter, and 98 Degrees without the slightest sense of shame. But it was, “Brother My Brother,” by Blessid Union of Souls that always got me. Ah, shit–now I’m feeling all sentimental and nostalgic.
Hilary Milnes //
Spice Girls - Spice
When people think of the Spice Girls, “I wanna really, really, really wanna zigazig-ah” usually comes to mind. Probably because that lyric doesn’t make any sense. But when I was six, they were much more than that. I don’t remember how I got Spice into my snotty little hands, but that first album was just the tip of the Spice Girl ladyboner sprouting in my swishy suit. I choreographed a specific routine to “Say You’ll Be There,” slow jammed to the sexual innuendos of “2 Become 1,” and skipped over “Naked” because that one weirded me out. And when their US tour rolled in to Pittsburgh, I slapped on my Spice Girls baseball hat (?) and flashed the peace sign in every photo op. Those British betches represented girl power and platform boots and five different dynamics of spice (I desperately wanted to be Baby). I played both of their CDs until they broke in my boombox, and when Geri Halliwell realized 26 was too old to be running around as Ginger Spice (foolish), they eventually got replaced by the Britneys and Christinas. I don’t think I knew or cared who Justin Timberlake was. So thank you, Spice Girls, for giving us Spice and launching the development of a tiny lesbian.
Chris Coe //
Green Day - American Idiot
So the year is 2004, and I’m in fourth grade. It’s Christmas break and I just got my first iPod. Naturally, I needed some good music to put on it. I grabbed some from my family and friends, but it wasn’t until I went out to buy my first CD that I began to shape my own musical taste.
American Idiot, by Green Day was my very first album I ever physically owned. At the time, it was thirteen tracks of angsty, rebellious, and melodic perfection. My two best friends and I loved it, we knew every word to every song. We were in elementary school and listened to music where they’d drop the f-bomb, so we thought we were pretty damn cool. Owning this album, and getting to read over and appreciate the album art inside helped to spark a long love for music which I still have today. I loved the drums in “Are We The Waiting,” so I started drumming. I eventually got my own drum set, and played in my school’s band all the way up to eighth grade. Listening to this album now, eight years later, feels almost nostalgic – and I love it.
Michael Raible //
Smash Mouth - Fush Yu Mang
A surprisingly dark and weird album that I’m sure I didn’t understand a word of when I bought it in like second grade. Rocked my world until my parents took it away because one of the songs said “fuck.”
Julie Weil //
Jennifer Lopez - On the 6
When On The 6 hit stores in 1999, I thought Jennifer Lopez was amazing. She had not only just convincingly played the lead in a biopic of my favorite singer at the time, Selena, but had also been blowing up MTV with the album’s hits: Let’s Get Loud, If You Had My Love, and my personal favorite, Waiting For Tonight. When I went with my mother to the CD store to pick out the album with an underwear-clad Jennifer Lopez on the cover, she was not too pleased. But she finally gave in and let me have the On The 6. I spent that night with my boombox, listening to Waiting For Tonight on repeat, making up my own dance routine and memorizing the lyrics in the CD booklet.
Sherelle Isaacs //
Backstreet Boys - Backstreet’s Back
Technically, I owned several albums when I was a kid (usually paid for by my parents) ranging from classics like Barney’s Greatest Hits to Kris Kross’ Jump single. But the first album I ever purchased with my own hard-earned cash was the Backstreet Boys’ Backstreet’s Back album on cassette. I definitely thought I was the coolest five year-old on the block blaring their record on my Walkman and singing their lyrics while asking people “am I sexual?”