5. Nirvana - Nevermind
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uNaQeBUmEo Hardcore Nirvana fans would point you to In Utero for the bands 'true' pièce de la résistance, but for the mass audience - or just your general music fan - it'll be Nevermind that's the return-listen of choice. Smells Like Teen Spirit goes without saying as the face of music-smasher it was built to be, and although Nirvana were not the first grunge band to emerge from Seattle (that honour goes to Soundgarden), nor is Nevermind as aurally-challenging as their debut Bleach, it was this naked-baby-fronted behemoth that enabled the movement to walk with revolution-imprinting boots. Many of Cobain's lyrics remain open to interpretation - and obviously therein lies the timeless appeal of the music in the first place - but it's the ones we do know of; the twisted lyrics of Polly that tell of a woman being abused and tortured - that were the perfect anathema to what the likes of Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and then-Guns n' Roses were putting across. Gone were the fancy hairdos and the idea that you had to first climb a certain pedestal before you could be heard, Nirvana proved it was the songs that mattered most, and in 2014 are still remembered as such - even if the music industry is slowly eating itself alive again. It's impossible to get sick of: Breed. Nirvana were drastically ahead of their time, and supremely unpredictable thanks to the band's mentality of putting out whatever they felt like, meaning compositions here go from the ultimately dour Something in the Way up to the likes of Breed and Territorial P*ssings - the latter sounding like the backing track to some metaphysical fixtures n' fittings-destroying world population-partaking riot.