Def Leppard's fourth album Hysteria is a hit machine - one of the biggest selling albums of all time. Released in 1987 and armed with seven hit songs, 'Thriller with a Mullet' was the biggest adversary to the emerging Hair Hunx dynasty at the time and continues to soundtrack our lives and pad cover band setlists to this day.

The only two likable members of iconic Vietnam War soundtrack band Jefferson Airplane peel away from the group in 1972 and put together a side project called Hot Tuna. Their debut studio album Burgers is pure back porch boogie warmth compared to the bloated and cold catalog of their main band. Classic rock stoner deep tracks all up in this one.

This is the album to start with if you're looking to cash in your PJ Harvey V-card. Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea is really just one story - an iconoclastic musician letting loose and enjoying her life. Then again, PJ Harvey says that most of her songs are not autobiographical, so who knows what.

A half hour of bursting instrumental beauties from the second most famous person from Fredon, NJ.

More Songs About Buildings and Food is the Talking Heads second album and the first of three masterpieces with Brian Eno riding shotgun. This is the LP where the Talking Heads find their sound in real time and begin a decade-long journey making asexuality...danceable.

King Diamond was already a metal legend when he put out the semi-conceptual The Spider's Lullabye in 1995. It's almost an afterthought for King D - he considered it forgettable and difficult to make. For Boogie Chitz, The Spider's Lulz is a classic and contains some of the best 1990's dance beats this side of La Bouche - despite being a thematic European heavy metal record.

The Pleasure Seekers were formed by the headstrong teenaged Quatro sisters of Detroit in 1964 and might just be the first all-female rock & roll band in cultural American history. They didn't record a full-length LP during their five-year run, but in 2011 the What a Way to Die compilation was released and provides us with a twelve track song history of a mighty awesome band that would otherwise be forgotten in time.

If you're looking to get loose with some Euro-Disco - Giorgio is your man and 1977's From Here to Eternity is the place to start. Giorgio Moroder is often cited as the 'Father of Disco' for his string of bangers with Donna Summer - and his work as composer on the soundtracks of some of Hollywood's biggest movies of the 1980s is equally compelling.

For a band that only released two albums, and was around for such a short period of existence, the New York Dolls impact and influence on rock and roll has been extraordinary. Their eponymous 1973 debut album barely made it out of lower Manhattan at the time of release, but has grown into a cult classic and is universally regarded as the sonic prototype for the creation of punk music that would follow several years later.