Do you have an album—be it vinyl, cassette, CD, or whatever—that you played over and over, that somehow got down inside you? The deputy editor at New Statesman, Tom Gatti here presents essays by 50 authors reviewing the albums that shaped who they became. As Deborah Levy writes of David Bowie: "When I first got my hands on Ziggy Stardust, its effect was nothing less than throwing petrol at the naked flame of teenage longing and desire for another sort of life." Marlon James turns to Post by Björk, while George Saunders has Fragile by Yes. Sarah Perry is electrified by Rachmaninov, Ben Okri by Miles Davis, and David Mitchell by Joni Mitchell.