9. The Doors // The Doors, 1967
The gloom of The Doors’ debut album is one of its hallmark features, the wispy crooning of Jim Morrison’s voice, versatile in its switch to melodic screech, partnered with the walking baseline and sporadic organ.
Classics such as ‘Light My Fire’ and ‘The End’ are rife with destiny and ominous futures, the band nurturing songs in experimentation that seemed too obscure to work. But the album created icons seemingly overnight; their exoticism, darkness and popular refusal to adhere to any codes provided an alternative in a landscape otherwise saturated with songs relying predominantly on upbeat melodies. The spoken word element used by Morrison — often the Electric Poet — only further shifts The Doors from rock to an unmistakable mystic entity.
In eleven years, eight albums failed to match up to their debut, except perhaps L.A. Woman. In 1973 the band parted ways, two years after Morrison’s death at 27.