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There’s been one of those “Paste this to your profile and tag everyone you know” memes going around Facebook the last week or two about “15 albums that will always stick with you.” I find these sorts of lists to be annoying in the same way as chain letters and generally refuse to propagate them on principle.

This particular one got me thinking, though, so you get to read about it here.

The idea of the list is that you’re supposed to jot down the first 15 albums that come to mind, without thinking about it a whole bunch. Off the top of my head, my list looks something like this:

• Slayer – Seasons In the Abyss
• Nine Inch Nails – Pretty Hate Machine
• John Coltrane – Blue Train
• Orbital – Orbital 2
• Ministry – In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Showing Up
• Beastie Boys – Paul’s Boutique
• Front Line Assembly – Caustic Grip
• Intermix – S/T
• Metallica – Master Of Puppets
• MC 900 Ft Jesus – Welcome To My Dream
• Fugazi – 13 Songs
• Mike Doughty – Rockity Roll
• Neutral Milk Hotel – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
• Keith Jarrett – At the Blue Note, 1st Set
• Plastikman – Consumed

What struck me about this list (and the reason I’m writing about it all) is that, for the most part, these albums are all pretty old. My immediate reaction was to be somewhat embarrassed at being so hopeless biased toward the music I listened to in college.

At the risk of sounding defensive, though, I don’t think it’s really all that surprising that this sort of list would be weighted towards albums that are older relative to my age. There are plenty of albums that have come out in the five to ten years that I really like, but I just don’t know yet how well they’re going to hold up. Ask me this same question ten years from now, and some of those may have crept on to this list. Until that point, though, I’m not going to make any baseless claims about how long-term awesome they are.