The first album to ever properly knock my little socks of was "Madness Presents...The Rise And Fall" by Madness (usually just known as "The Rise And Fall". I was 9 and was given the cassette for Xmas by my parents. They were at the peak of their powers and yet this album didn't sell so well, despite coming in the middle of one of their most successful runs of singles. Every song sounds different to every other and yet you could be listening to no-one else. The ambition in the writing and arrangements is palpable and, even with a couple of middling songs, the album as a whole just shines from beginning to end. It was the album where I first learned how much you could really do with music and it changed my relationship with music as a thing.
Today, there are obvious blemishes. A member in brownface on the cover and a song called "New Delhi" in which a couple of the band do what Nish Kumar called "The Accent" towards the end (which is actually the only problem with what is otherwise an excellent song which incorporates Indian instruments and microtonal shifts very well indeed - a shame the masters are lost and the voices can't be mixed out). Plus, the group's name has aged badly. But to a nine year old in 1982, I was too young and had too narrow a worldview to think too much of this - it didn't seem any different to the English comedians on television doing a Scottish accent. That was being white in Glasgow in the early 80s for you.
I still listen to the album and I still find it rewarding. Their ability to write songs about urban decay (the 'managed decline' of Liverpool), war (Falklands), depression, suicide, fraud (!) and mix these seamlessly with some of the more jaunty material for which they were known remains remarkable to me.