Like every soul on this godforsaken Earth with a Facebook account, I get “tagged” pretty frequently. What does this mean, you ask? This means I am given a pointless questionnaire by a friend, who ostensibly wants to know more about me, to be filled out and posted on my Facebook page. Invariably my friend will have just filled out the same questionnaire himself, and posted his own answers on his own Facebook page, and as part of the terms for filling out this questionnaire, he must impose upon others to do the same, due to certain chain-letter-esque clauses and conditions. So, to be clear, there is no actual curiosity on the parts of my friends—merely obligation and a slavish devotion to arbitrary so-called rules.

Just the same, it is sort of flattering to be tagged. It’s also sort of fun (if you have OCD) to be forced to think about your life in the rigid terms of a list, which is how most of these questionnaires break down.

Of course, while I might answer the questions, I never post my answers on Facebook, because: (a) I am distrustful of Facebook; (b) due to my aforementioned OCD, I am easily frustrated by the formatting limitations presented by Facebook’s interface; and (c) I want my friends to know exactly as little about me as possible.

But I do not feel this way about you, dear reader! No, with you, I wish to share my most intimate secrets. With you, I love to share. I choose to share. Specifically, I choose to share one recent questionnaire in particular. So…let’s share! The terms of the questionnaire were as follows:

Think of 15 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world. When you finish, tag 15 others. Get the idea now? Good. Tag, you’re it!

First, I might mention that I like the parameters laid out in this prompt—it’s open-ended, but not totally undefined. I have trouble discerning my “favorite” albums of any particular time period, or the year’s “best” albums, because terms like “favorite” and “best” are too nebulous to nail down. But the 15 albums that “shaped [my] world”? Those I can pick out.

But rather than just list them, I’m going to use this space to write, at length, about each of these albums. Because what is the point of me simply telling you that Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream, for instance, is one of the albums that “shaped my world”? What does that tell you about me? What does that tell you about the music?

I’m going to write these entries in the chronological order in which I first heard the albums. That’s the only way to get a proper sense of how they had any effect in shaping me, because each one is built on the ones that came before it. Each one was another step on a staircase, another rung on a ladder, a ladder…to mediocrity. I don’t anticipate this 15-part series will run consecutively—it will surely be interrupted by other subjects—but I intend to finish it by year’s end. At which point, you are free to remind me of the dozens of albums I somehow left out. So, with that lengthy explanation out of the way, let’s get started, at the closest place to a beginning as I know.

1. Iron Maiden – Somewhere in Time (original release date: June 29, 1986)

In 1986, I was 12 years old, in seventh grade, so as you might imagine, there was music in my life before Somewhere in Time—random detritus like Michael Jackson and Bryan Adams and Duran Duran and Dire Straits and Hall & Oates and “We Are the Ever-Loving World”—and all of that helped to shape me, too. But Somewhere in Time marked a graduation for me, a growth, a new, nascent understanding of music and my life and the universe.

I can’t remember first hearing Iron Maiden, although I know it was at my friend Eddie’s house, in his bedroom, on his turntable. I do remember Eddie had heavy-metal record sleeves hanging from his ceiling, by way of decoration—Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, W.A.S.P.—to make the place resemble a record store, I guess, and while that effect was not exactly achieved, I was nonetheless in awe of the artwork that hung above me every time I walked in that room, the empty cardboard sleeves swinging, spinning, on fishing line. Eddie’s knowledge of music was impressive, and his enthusiasm was infectious, and I found myself quickly trying to learn as much as I could, so that I could have something like that in my own life—because I was 12, and when you are 12, you need something. I had baseball, sure, and comic books, but those were vestiges of my childhood: Heavy metal was new, grown-up, terrifying. It had tremendous power—and it was thrilling to know that I too could possess that power.

Musically speaking, there is nothing special about Somewhere in Time—if anything, it marks the beginning of the decline of one of heavy metal’s most beloved acts. Prior to Somewhere in Time, Maiden had released a string of classics; since Somewhere in Time, Maiden has released a string of uneven filler. But Somewhere in Time was the band’s new album when I was in seventh grade, and therefore, it was the one I bought (on cassette, no less), the one I obsessed over, the one that opened the door for all the ones that followed—literally every single one. Had it not been Maiden to capture my imagination—had I fallen in love with, say,  The Doors or The Beatles or The Grateful Dead—I cannot even begin to envision how different my life would be today. Better? Perhaps. More boring? I think so.

Somewhere in Time was the moment I recognized music as something bigger than songs; it was the first time I was able to embrace music as a part of my identity. Iron Maiden was the first band whose T-shirts I wore, the first band whose logo I scrawled onto textbook covers and desks, the first band whose imagery and iconography meant something to me. I suspect this is true of many men who grow up to love music, especially men in my age group, but Iron Maiden will always be at the very center of my musical experience. They were my first favorite band—the first band that ever belonged to me, the first band that ever spoke for me.  They were the band on which I built my understanding of music, and as such, the band on which I built my life.