As the newest, youngest, and most innocent employee at the great WLFM, I – Peter Raffel, of On Patrol, Mondays 7-9 PM CT, decided to introduce myself to those who seem me as merely a question-mark-cog in the machine that is our amazing station. And in order to do so in a manner that will help my fellow music snobs trust my judgement in deciding what is good and what is bad (with not as much dilemma as Rachele seems to be having), I’ve decided to give you all a brief list of ten albums that have changed my life over the course of my broad nineteen years. Note the difference between “favorite” and “life-changing” here (for example: I’d argue that Ciara’s Goodies changed my life, but wouldn’t include it on a top 1000 list). And so, without further ado, I give you ten albums that brought me to the humble abode that is WLFM:

1. Abbey Road, The Beatles – It’s an obvious favorite album of all people with ears and a brain in their head, but Abbey Road was my first foray into the ideology that an album could be more than simply a handful of songs. Beautifully crafted, and amazingly executed (as well as being the Beatles best album – that’s right, the BEST), Abbey Road taught me about great music, great struggle, and great love during the course of its forty-seven minute majesty. At the ripe age of five, I was already on the road to what would eventually bring me to where I am – telling people that what they like is terrible and what I like is awesome.
2. The Wall, Pink Floyd – Although I would consider Animals to be the greatest Floyd album, my dissection of The Wall had escaped me until this year when I brushed the dust off of its placid cover and plunged into its depths once again. The utterly desolate and incredibly exquisite double album is the quintessential concept record, that drains the listener more and more with each listen. I was memorizing the ideas of loneliness at the young age of eight, and learning that great music needs to be full of great emotion.
3. Speakerboxx/The Love Below, OutKast – I could obviously go on and on about Outkast for years, but Speakerboxx/The Love Below was the defining point in which my music career switched from 70s Rock ‘n Roll to everything else – because, essentially, Outkast’s two-solo-albums-in-one can’t really be categorized into one genre, and it’s what makes Andre 3000 in particular one of the few geniuses of our generation.  Taking concepts that feel repeated constantly on modern rap albums, OutKast turned them into something tangible, vulnerable, and most of all, sexy as all hell.
4. Illinoise, Sufjan Stevens – Perhaps it’s a bit of a cliche to put Stevens’ best-known album on a list like this, but I probably picked apart this album more than any I ever had. I’d listen to it endlessly in middle school, trying to decipher what was Stevens and what was fiction – and I never really got the answers, which is part of the genius of Stevens as a musician and an artist. History, emotion, love, loss, all encompassed within one album – when you look at it this way, it makes a lot more sense that he never completed the 50 States Project, because he completed it with Illinoise, particularly the harrowing “John Wayne Gacy Jr.,” which combines the sickness of mankind with the softness of humanity.
5. Late Registration, Kanye West – During an era in which rap was essentially minimalistic beeps-and-boops (see: D4L) or ambitious insanity projects (see: Missy Elliott), West brought it back to the classic with his follow-up to The College Dropout, and this album was essentially the road the paved the way for what he is today. Great beats, mixed with great rhymes, West took a page out of OutKast’s book by tearing song structure apart and teaching a white seventh grader that being into rap was cool as long as you knew that Gil-Scott Heron was being sampled on “My Way Home.”
6. Skelliconnection, Chad VanGaalen – Probably one of the most underrated singer-songwriters of our generation, VanGaalen’s Skelliconnection is his masterpiece, which combines his harrowing voice with a variety of musical styles, from acoustic pieces to explosive jams (especially the opener, “Flower Gardens”). It was a time in which the eeriness of the world could be matched with “Wing Finger,” the sadness matched with “Sing Me 2 Sleep,” and the amazement matched with “Dead Ends.” And maybe it was because I was graduating middle school, and because Harry Potter was ending, but something about VanGaalen stuck, and this album has been on repeat ever since.
7. Microcastle, Deerhunter – Bradford Cox and company have had a bizarre roller coaster of a musical career, but the beauty that is Microcastle essentially wraps up what they’re all about in a tight album – there’s no real arc or beginning or end, and in the final moments of “Twilight at Carbon Lake,” one knows that no matter how many times they listen to the album, they’re going to be listening again. And in the times before I was able to drive where I wanted to go, it made the most sense to plug in to “Agrophobia” and simply become one with the album that knew me better than I knew myself.
8. Person Pitch, Panda Bear – I’ve considered on countless occasions that Person Pitch may be my favorite album of all time, despite the varying levels of my enjoyment based on track (I used to go by Strawberry Jam as my favorite and “Bros” as my favorite song, but that changed (more on that later)), and I think it’s very telling that I’ve chosen this album as the one that stays with me no matter where I end up. The amazing comfortability of “Take Pills” (no pun intended i.e. “Comfy in Nautica”) on early morning bike rides, and the insanity that is “Bros” and “Good Girl/Carrots” is a constantly changing beast no matter how many listens, and Panda Bear is at the center of it: one man with a vision, a heart, and a place in a teenager’s mind as a hero.
9. This Is It…, Marnie Stern – Although Marnie Stern’s music tends to ride the fine line between utterly wild and utterly wholesome, I probably listened to This Is It… more than any album in 2008 strictly because of how catchy the songs were, matched with the awe I felt for her as a guitarist – and Zach Hill as a drummer, who I still can’t even believe is a person. I’d do Art History homework for hours on end listening to the album over and over again, and I immediately fell in love with Stern (probably for real). And although it isn’t nearly as personal of an album as her self-titled 2010 effort, it sinks into you the more you listen to it – and considering how much I listened to it, I’d say it stuck.
10. Public Strain, Women – As with growing up, Women’s Public Strain has taken on a different face over time, so much so that I cannot explain its grasp on me. I’ve listened to it countless times and yet it always seems new – it’s been changing my life from the day it came out until now (I’d call “Eyesore” my favorite song of all time – there, I said it). It’s an album full of hopelessness, but more hope than anything else, and something about the way these guys weave their guitars together, as well as their poetry-esque lyrics, makes me feel like there’s hope for music overall. And even if there isn’t, we’ll always have Public Strain, an ode to everything that is great about music and will continue to be great.