A theme · all themes
Roots
Five records from before the map starts. Everything else we publish is downstream of one of these, and most of it is downstream of several.
What gets in, and what does not
A record only qualifies if something we publish is demonstrably downstream of it — a lineage arrow, a borrowed rhythm, a sampled bar. Being early is not enough, and neither is being great.
Every record here is already in one of our rankings — a theme re-cuts what the site has vouched for, and vouches for nothing new. These ones come from:
- Picks
- 5
- Drawn from
- 5 rankings
- Years
- 1967–1978
- Curator
- The Waxonia Desk
- Updated
- 2026-08-29
Listen to the whole list
Play it through here →One record after another, with the verdicts
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The records — selected, not ranked
James Brown / Cold Sweat
1967 · King
Start here. Brown tells the band to put the accent on the first beat and stop changing chord, and the next sixty years of dance music become possible in about eight bars.
Also on Funk, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred, The Waxonia Desk — Where the Accent Moved
Augustus Pablo / King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown
1976 · Yard Music
The mixing desk becomes an instrument. Every record on this site built from the bass upward, with the vocal free to vanish for a bar, is working from the grammar King Tubby set here.
Also on Dub, 1976, The Waxonia Desk — Ghosts, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Neu! / Hallogallo
1972 · Brain
Ten minutes of a beat that never accents anything. The idea that a rhythm can drive without swinging is the one European contribution the Americans genuinely had to import.
Also on Krautrock, The Waxonia Desk — Krautrock, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Donna Summer / I Feel Love
1977 · Casablanca
Eno reportedly burst into Bowie's Berlin session announcing that the sound of the future had arrived. Early by about six years, and wrong by about nothing.
Also on Disco, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Public Image Ltd / Public Image
1978 · Virgin
The guitar stops chugging and starts ringing, the bass takes the tune, and British guitar music spends the next fifteen years working out what to do with the space that left.
Also on Post-Punk, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Who made this
The people who write the rankings on this site. We keep the lists honest, we argue about the order, and we get asked the same question more than any other: where should someone actually start. These are our answers.