If I was pushed to name my favourite album of all time, this would be it. For me it's a combination of great memories - this was one of the albums I took with me when I went travelling around Australia in 1998 - and full throttle, no-holds-barred, gold-plated rock songs. I mean, it's got Monkey Wrench, My Hero, February Stars, Up In Arms and Everlong. Any one of those would make an album, all of them together make a monster.

Long before he was starting fires with uptown girls, Billy Joel produced what I think is his best album, a love letter to New York and the people who live there. By turns raw and whistful, New York State of Mind paints a romantic picture of life in the big city, I've Loved These Days boasts the contentment of a life well lived (with a little living still left to do) and Miami 2017 has an end of empire (state) feel that may yet prove prophetic as the Trump era gets underway...

After taking the world by storm with Hot Fuss, The Killers tried something a little different on their second coming: whereas Hot Fuss worked because it was a collection of great songs, Sam's Town works because it's a great album. It picks you up and drops you in small-town Nevada, you can feel the desert heat coming out of the speakers; it has a wild-west swagger and a Vegas-bravado, but there's also a big, beating heart at the centre of it all. It sets out it's stall with the stadium-rocking When You Were Young, builds through For Reasons Unknown and Bones, and then brings it home with the glorious The River Is Wild and Why Do I Keep Counting? Just brilliant. ...the circus and the crew, well they're just passing through, making sure the merry still goes round, but it's a long, long, long way down...