The Album(s) That Changed Your Life

It may be, dear Christian, that you are right. In any case, my father's passion for Verdi should not be considered the norm of Italian parents. And Italian teenagers who listen to classical music are also a minority. You can find them especially among people with artistic inspirations (not just musicians but aspiring writers, cinema or theater enthusiasts). Almost all the writers I know, as teenagers or in college, were - like me - already quite versed in classical music (fewer were experts in opera) and cinema, as well as in literature and rock of the sixties and seventies. 

Certainly in Italy there is a strong aptitude for melody, both at a popular and cultured level. In southern Italy almost all women love melodic music, few females love rock. After all, Italian melodic music derives from the arias of operas. Italian criticism, on the other hand, is often very far from the tastes of the public, because it is very attentive to formal values ​​and very self-critical - almost all Italian artists who are successful in the world, especially in America, in Italy are snubbed by critics. 

I try to be flexible, but on the whole I recognize a certain value in this type of criticism, which derives mainly from Marxist culture (Italy, the Catholic country par excellence, has developed, in compensation, a very strong left culture, which until 2-3 decades ago it was hegemon, while liberal and Catholic culture was a minority - I come from a very Catholic family, so I absorbed Catholic education, but growing up I found myself in many ways in left-wing culture, albeit always in a very autonomous way, without ever following belonging).

I suppose I should start by mentioning Pink Floyd - The Wall - although it was in my parents collection. It was the first album that made me aware music could be more than one song after the other.

Metallica - Master of Puppets was really the first I found on my own and obsessed with (while my parents hated it). Before that I was mostly buying the music of my parents generation, that they were never cool enough to have in their collection. My 20 years too late to the party-tastes were even less cool, I suppose). We also had a handful of seemingly random collections of classical music. But as a child I played those Grieg, Mozart, Beethoven etc. snippets over and over. Although it was typically "classical hits"-compilations, I'm glad they were there for me to discover. As a young adult, maybe this has had the biggest impact on me. It changed the rules, turned them upside down and inside out - and in a disturbingly fun way:). Beginning in this end or approach to "progressive rock" is probably why it took me so long to fully embrace Camel:)