These Are The Greatest Debut Albums In Rock History
They don't get much better than these five debut albums.
My fellow OutKick writer, Bobby Burack, took to X earlier today to declare Guns N' Roses the greatest rock band of all-time.
While I vehemently disagree with Bobby, I do respect GnR's place among the pantheon of all-time greats in rock history, and their debut album, Appetite For Destruction, is still one of the landmark releases of the genre.
This got me thinking: what are some of the greatest major label debuts in rock history?
I decided to put together a short list of some of the best freshman efforts any band has ever released, with some criteria to go along with it.
These albums had to have been wildly successful, either contemporarily speaking or with the benefit of time passing, and should already be fully formed representations of the band's sound.
Sure, musical acts can and should evolve, but these albums should, at the very least, contain a small sampling of some of the band's best material.
Finally, these records all have to have been game changers in the annals of rock history.
Whether it represented a shift in musical taste among the masses or reshaped how people viewed the guitar (rock's most important instrument), all the debuts listed below have their own place in the story of rock and roll.
Let's dive in, in chronological order, no less!
Are You Experienced? - Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967)
We kick this list off with a bang, as the world's introduction to Jimi Hendrix's incendiary guitar playing, Are You Experienced?, may be the virtuoso's finest hour.
While it's undeniable that Hendrix steals the show with his explosive riffs and imaginative take on blues scale soloing, The Jimi Hendrix Experience was considered a power trio for a reason.
Bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell were both incredible musicians in their own right, and on songs like "Fire" and "Manic Depression," their chops are able to shine through and, in some cases, take center stage over their more popular bandmate.
After this album, the way people looked at the electric guitar completely changed, which can only be said for one other musician a little further down on the list.
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin (1969)
For all you Sabbath fans out there, it was a dead heat for which proto-heavy metal debut would take this spot, but I had to go with Led Zeppelin's eponymous opening effort.
Released 13 months before Sabbath's own self-titled debut, Led Zeppelin represented a shift from the mop-headed British invasion of bands like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles and straight into hard rock and, eventually, heavy metal.
Even the opening track, "Good Times Bad Times," features a barrage of distorted power chords, wild, bendy guitar solos, and lead singer Robert Plant's signature wail.
Make no mistake about it, this was heavier than anything being played on the radio in 1969, and while it took a while to catch on, this album is considered one of the Old Testaments of the heavy metal Biblical texts.
Van Halen - Van Halen (1978)
While Hendrix may have rewritten the rules of rock guitar a decade earlier, Edward Van Halen invented an entirely different language for the instrument.
Van Halen's seminal debut is, in my opinion, the single greatest debut album in music history.
Featuring the aforementioned guitar god's shredding prowess and revolutionary two-handed tapping technique, charismatic lead singer David Lee Roth's confident crooning and iconic screams, and a thunderous rhythm section, no band came close to the Pasadena quartet in the late 70s.
While the compositions were musically complex, they had a mainstream accessibility about them that made this album a radio-ready smash hit.
Many of the band's most popular songs appear on the grooves of this album, such as "Runnin' With The Devil," "Ain't Talkin' ‘Bout Love," and "Jamie’s Cryin'," among others.
Iron Maiden - Iron Maiden (1980)
Forged in the crucible of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal scene of the late 70s, Iron Maiden combined the speed and aggressiveness of punk rock with the complexity of heavy metal and, in doing so, birthed one of the best heavy metal bands of all-time.
Thanks to the twin guitar attack of Dave Murray and Adrian Smith coupled with the galloping bass lines and fantastical lyrics of de facto band leader, Steve Harris, Iron Maiden's unique sound made them stand out among their peers even from the very beginning.
What's insane about Iron Maiden is that the album is basically a demo tape but already features the band's signature sound and riffing that fans would fall in love with.
Few groups were as polished as Maiden was during their formative years, and it allowed them to release one of the greatest debut albums of all time, with fan favorites like "Running Free," "Phantom Of The Opera," and the title track still being played live to this day.
Appetite For Destruction - Guns N' Roses (1987)
By the late 1980s, heavy metal and its peripheral genres had become bloated caricatures of themselves.
That's not to say I don't still love some of the more polished "glam metal" that was popular around this time, but take a look at some of the albums that were released in 1987 from bands like Whitesnake and Def Leppard.
Guns N' Roses saw this and decided to bring rock back to its roots while still maintaining the complex nature of its contemporaries, and thus, Appetite For Destruction was born.
The album was a smash success despite it being a raw and gritty take on the current landscape of the music scene, eventually selling 18 million copies in the U.S. alone.
Songs like "Welcome To The Jungle" and "Sweet Child O' Mine" were radio mammoths that helped fuel the success of GnR's debut, but deep cuts like "Nightrain" and "Mr. Brownstone" are where the blues-metal styling of guitarist Slash and the mind-bending vocal performances of Axl Rose shine through.
Though Guns N' Roses never replicated the "lightning in a bottle" of Appetite – with all other releases being over-produced efforts that fall just short, in my opinion – this is the band's finest hour from start to finish and is still one of the most impressive debuts in rock history.