When you’re young, you don’t always have a good grasp on what constitutes good music; never mind what is cool and popular, or has street cred, or will still be cool in 15 years. You’re often influenced by your parents or older siblings, which is cool if your older brother listened to Smashing Pumpkins, but not if your parents had a deep seated love for The Backstreet Boys and Mariah Carey (Like my parents). Personally, I was not only heavily influenced by my older sister who introduced me to Blink 182 and Nirvana, but also by what was played on the Much Music we may or may not remember of the 90s, from Pop-Up Video, to The Countdown. When you would keep a blank VHS ready for when your favourite video came on and run to record it.
Before you start to establish your musical tastes, there are some embarrassing purchases that happen along the way. This is all part of the growing pains of life, and helps shape who you become and what music you inevitably listen to; so there’s no reason to be ashamed. That being said – it can be really entertaining to find out what someone’s first album was (which is why I usually include it as an interview question).
To share the embarrassment, I have asked my staff to divulge the squirm-inducing, the shocking and the great: their first albums.
1. Jessica Ruby – Editor-in-Chief
I’ll go first, cause I’m nice like that. Also, I’m still proud of mine.
First Album: Alanis Morrisette – Jagged Little Pill
This album was awesome, and kind of badass with the explicit language warning. I bought a lot more embarrassing ones after this like the Now & Then soundtrack, but I would still jam out to this if it were on.
2. Dave Stuckey – Contributor
First Album: Alanis Morrisette – Jagged Little Pill
I”m not kidding.. it was the same one. Clearly this is why we get along!
3. Sky Regina – Editor and Writer
My first album was a direct result of spending time with a crew of older cousins that lived in “the big city” of Toronto (I lived in Newmarket, so it seemed very glam to me).
First Album: Salt-N-Pepa – Very Necessary
I’ll always appreciate my mom for ignoring the “Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics” sticker and purchasing this CD for my 5th birthday. Way to go Mom – its because of your disregard for censorship that I can still rap the lyrics to “Shoop”, essentially a song about young, sexually-liberated women wanting to fuck hot men. My obsession with this CD resulted in a videotape from Wonderland of my brother and I lip-syncing “Whatta Man” to a fancy backdrop of green screen images. Needless to say, this album had a huge influence on my early childhood, and its still cool to this day.
4. Adam Kay – Writer
First Album: Sum 41 – All Killer No Filler
I remember being in Grade 6 and in my final year of primary school, preparing for the upcoming school air band concert, for which a group of us had decided to perform ”In Too Deep” by Sum 41- complete with matching choreography. I’m sure that there were many albums before this one but they were either NOW (that’s what I call music) bullshit or from my mum’s 80’s collection. I was given illegally burned copies of All Killer No Filler and Half Hour Of Power, complete with badly printed cover art, by a friend in my class in order to help with my practice sessions for the upcoming ”gig”. I remember 11 year old me playing and replaying these albums while on my PlayStation and I’m sure that’s why they’ve had such a lasting impression.
5. Sal Farooqui – Writer
First Album: Tame Impala – Innerspeaker


Ben Ridge
Some of these are wayyyy too good to be true, or some of you have had impeccable taste since conception.
My first single was teenage dirt bag by wheetus turning 12. This was followed by hear say pure ‘n simple where it looks like the bands farts are bring lit from behind!