T.Rex

This album, a pair of gorgeous, androgynous longhairs with incredible cheekbones on it's cover, showed up first. It's songs talked of girls with jewels on their lips riding zebras and a chance encounter with a wizard. The sound was a strange brew concocted from different strains of earlier rock 'n' roll: some folk, some rock, and an undeniable debt to Eddie Cochran. Marc Bolan's music, persona, and look were strange, beautiful, and whimsical enough that if you tried to explain his massive popularity to somebody born after the century Bolan lived in, for just shy of 30 years, it would probably sound like a story from eons ago. We know glam came after T. Rex, but it's also just a skip to the Sex Pistols, Ramones, and more punk from there; it's also not far from the ""post"" sounds that came out of New York and London around 1977 or the darkness and decadence of Siouxsie Sioux and Bauhaus either. The tarted-up heavy metal of Hanoi Rocks and Poison in the 1980s followed, and into this newer century, you can hear Bolan's direction heeded and reimagined by Alison Goldfrapp or Devendra Banhart. All of that is because of this album, the sound of Marc Bolan turning the key to unlock his true potential. His magically strange vision took shape here, and nothing has been the same since.