The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses

THE self-titled debut by this UK group was so big not even they could follow it up, taking seven years to make their next album and breaking up soon after. The Stone Roses were at the centre of the burgeoning Madchester scene and this remains the apex of the movement, which combined Brit-pop, dance, psychedelic and alt-rock. Rightly regarded as one of the best English albums of all time (NME called it "the greatest album ever''), The Stone Roses featured the dreamy yearning of I Wanna Be Adored, the pacy pop of She Bangs The Drum, psychedelic folk-rocker Waterfall, and the boppy rave-up I Am The Resurrection, with the Aussie version adding singles Elephant Stone and legendary epic Fool's Gold. Intermittently dancey and druggy, the album was head and shoulders above the other big UK alternative albums of 1989 and encapsulates everything that the Madchester scene was about - hanging out, getting high, dancing and having a good time.

Paul's Boutique - Beastie Boys/3 Feet High And Rising - De La Soul

HIP-HOP would never be the same after these two boundary-pushing albums. Both shook-up an increasingly stale genre that, despite being only a decade-old, was pre-occupied with shock and awe, starkness and simplicity, and popularity and profanity. On Paul's Boutique, The Beastie Boys bucked the flash-in-the-pan tag they had earnt from the college humour of License To Ill by creating a dense and dynamic epic that was lush and eclectic, while De La Soul proved with 3 Feet High And Rising that hip-hop could be about peace and love instead of pistols and hos. The advantage they had over what followed was that they were made prior to the copyright laws regarding sampling - in fact both albums helped trigger the cases that brought about those laws. Beastie Boys borrowed from Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Johnny Cash and Sly And The Family Stone among their 105 samples, while De La Soul used all of the above plus Billy Joel, Otis Redding, Michael Jackson and Hall And Oates among its 76 sampled songs.

Like A Prayer - Madonna

ROLLING Stone called this album "as close to art as pop music gets'' and it's one of those rare mega-selling pop albums that enjoyed major critical acclaim. While it failed to match the sales of her two previous studio albums (Like A Virgin and True Blue), Like A Prayer's eponymous first single and accompanying video shook up the mainstream like no other pop star at the time. With a provocative presence, matched with a good songwriting team big on memorable melodies, Madonna attracted attention and sales for all six singles from the album. But it was about more than just pointy brassieres and kissing black saints in film clips. The musical depth of Like A Prayer mirrored Michael Jackson's previous three albums (Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad) by merging pop and dance with soul, rock, disco and funk. Few mainstream female artists since have been as daring or edgy, and it's a obvious that without Madonna there would be no Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera or many other pop-tarts of the past 20 years.

Mother 's Milk - Red Hot Chili Peppers/The Real Thing - Faith No More/Suck On This - Primus

FOR a long time in rock, bass players were an integral but oft-ignored part of the band - even drummers got more chicks. But these three albums largely helped push bass players into the spotlight, albeit momentarily. By combining the harder sounds of metal, rock and punk with the grooves of funk and rap, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Faith No More and Primus (plus Jane's Addiction) pushed the growing funk-metal sound into the mainstream and alternative music into new realms. RHCP took their first steps toward becoming one of the biggest bands on the planet with Mother's Milk, which featured incendiary covers of Stevie Wonder's Higher Ground and Jimi Hendrix's Fire, as well as their first truly awesome original Knock Me Down. Faith No More's success may not have been as lasting but it was more immediate - Epic was the first massive alt-rock song to cross-over into the mainstream, despite boasting a then-unheard-of mix of rap, metal and funk and led by Mike Patton's frontman eccentricities. But it was Primus' Les Claypool who would become the patron saint of bass players in the soon-to-arrive '90s. The live album Suck On This, Primus' debut, didn't set any charts afire but on it Claypool unveiled bass sounds never heard on a modern rock record before and paved the way for ambitious bassists everywhere.