Blackout is my favorite Scorpions album, especially the title track and Dynamite.

I also have all 3 albums from the Uli Roth era which I love.
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Women and Children First still gets SO MANY spins, I have the Chris Bellman reissue and the original West German pressing, and I can't decide which sounds better, so I spin them both. The original US pressing sounds inferior to both, thought about selling it, might give it away, give it away, give it away now...

Double Fantasy will always have a sentimental place in my heart.

Fleetwood Mac Live is an awesome live compilation that sounds like one show, even though it was recorded over a 5 year period. I grew up on that bad bitch.

Did Grateful Dead Go to Heaven come out that year? The cover was dreadful, but it had "Althea", "Feel Like A Stranger", and Alabama Getaway" on it, they were rocking. I remember watching old footage of them on SNL doing "Alabama Getaway" and "Casey Jones"...

AC/DC Back In Black...ubiquitous. My faves : "Shoot To Thrill" and "Have A Drink On Me" (both are very Bon-esque...)

Billy Joel Glass Houses is a personal fave, I wore that cassette OUT.

Talking Heads Remain In Light.

Zenyatta Mondatta by the Police got a ton of play.

Emotional Rescue has become one of my favorite Stones albums over the years. It's really fucking good. Underrated, even. It gets bashed, but Some Girls and Tattoo You get heralded, but all 3 are literally cut from the same cloth, and Emotional Rescue is sandwiched between the other two. It's funky, dirty, bluesy, funny, and firmly toungue-in-cheek. It's a very "NYC at the dawn of the 80s via the Stones" kind of vibe, I suppose.
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And as far as guitar tone goes, it's Michael Schenker for me. I love pretty much every UFO guitar solo he ever did.
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2 albums neither one of us listed from 1983 but I guarantee we had them both :

Van Halen 1984
and
Thriller
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Rock Bottom, baby.

Strangers In the Night.
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Yeah, I'm into a little heavier music. I wasn't ever a big VH fan and I love early AC/DC but post-1980, I'm not fond. The Brian Johnson era just doesn't seem as raw and rough as the stuff they did with Bon.
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"I'm drinkin' whiskey at the party tonight, and I'm looking for somebody to squeeze..." and then I go, "oh, THAT'S how you play bass in a 3 piece band with someone who goes off the rails on guitar..."
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Ironically, my favorite solo of his is Only You Can Rock Me, which isn't one of my favorite songs of theirs.

And Strangers in the Night was a live album. Rock Bottom was originally released in 1974 on their debut album. Great song. GREAT album.
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Jailbreak 1974 kicks all kinds of ass to this day.

If we're going 70's, Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak album is definitely one of my all-time favorites. I love that album from start to finish and Phil's voice still gives me chills.
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I was a kid, so I listened to what my parents listened to until MTV brought Motley Crue into my life with "Looks That Kill" - I wasn't even in grade school yet. My cousin Ronnie came down to visit and he watched MTV, we all did, but I was into the Beatles, KISS, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Seger and Thriller.And when "Looks That Kill" came on, we were like a little mini Beavis & Butthead - "wow. This ROCKS. YES." I probably didn't say it out loud because I was very meek and KISS was really still popular amongst my cousins and the demographic at the time - Ronnie's stepbrother Tony had a KISS lunchbox that EVERYONE coveted - but I remember thinking, "wow, they're like KISS...BUT THEY ROCK HARDER AND THE MUSIC IS BETTER."

And then I'm over at my babysitter's, skipping down the sidewalk and Angie and the "older kids" (older than me) are rocking Shout At the Devil. I start singing along to "Looks That Kill" and Angie is like "you KNOW this song? Hey guys, this little kid knows this song! How do you know this song?"

I tell the truth : "I saw the video on MTV."

Their eyes widened in awe and respect, and I guess I was probably the coolest little kid they had ever interacted with at that point...

And the reason that you think that the Brian Johnson era just doesn't seem as raw and rough as the stuff they did with Bon is because it isn't as raw and rough as what they did with Bon. Powerage is the best AC/DC album ever and it's been that way since 1978 and it will never change. But I love AC/DC, and it was them along with KISS and Motley Crue that got me into heavy music, so albums like BIB, For Those About To Rock, Who Made Who, and Razor's Edge hold a special place for me, as they were popular when I was a kid. Who Made Who is really the album that "turned me on hard." I had a TDK D-90 cassette with Who Made Who on one side and Dirty Deeds (International Version) on the flip side, then I had Back In Black on another with Motley Crue Theatre of Pain on the B-side. And those albums, along with Welcome To My Nightmare by Alice Cooper, well, I kind of put Buddy Holly and the Beatles on the backburner and turned to the darkside.

Well, and Black Sabbath. We all love Black Sabbath.

Then Guns N Roses, The Black Crowes, and Nirvana came along, in real quick order for me.

I was lucky enough to be at the tail end of the "classic" rock era, I experienced hair metal and the 80s, and was just coming out of elementary school as the "alternative" Gen X era was really picking up steam, I remember watching the debut showing of Alice In Chains "Man In The Box" on MTV, probably Headbanger's Ball...
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A whole lot between 1971-76

But I tend to side with 1973:

Dark Side of the Moon
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Quadrophenia
Lynyrd Skynryd's first album
Selling England by the Pound (Genesis)
Tales From Topographic Oceans (Yes)
Houses of the Holy
Innervisions (Stevie Wonder)
Band on the Run
Aladdin Sane (Bowie)
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Let's Get It On (Marvin Gaye)
Lark's Tongues in Aspic (King Crimson)
Brain Salad Surgery (ELP)
A Wizard, A True Star (Todd Rundgren)
Bruce Springsteen's first two albums
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I've been looking at the release dates of some albums that i like and it's amazing how prolific some of these bands were. CCR released 6 albums in a two and a half year span for God's sake. Deep Purple released 10 albums between 68 and 75 - with three different lead singers. The Beatles had a million hits on a dozen albums all within just a few years, too.
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I picked up the Australian pressings (I have a New Zealand reissue for High Voltage) and it's weird to hear those songs in their "proper context" for me - I grew up with '74 Jailbreak, and even though it's less than a half our long, it blew my mind. "Soul Stripper", and maybe the best "Baby Please Don't Go" since Van the Man...
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Lynyrd Skynyrd's entire career is built on the albums recorded and released between 1973-1977.
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What? No Goat's Head Soup???
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