This week, the Heave staff was asked:

What was the first album you ever owned as a kid?

Calhoun Kersten

Ace of Base’s The Sign. I wear my love of Swede-fused pop as a badge of honor, although come to think of it, I should probably be more ashamed. Whatever, at least it wasn’t TLC’s CrazySexyCool, right? No, I saved that for second.

Chris Osterndorf

Smash Mouth’s Fush Yu Mang. There’s really nothing more to say about that.

Dan Chruscinski

The Oliver & Company soundtrack. Billy Joel and Bette Midler for the win! Good to know I’ve evolved since then…except I haven’t. At all.

Patrick Gill

On the same Christmas, in 1995, I got No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom and TLC’s CrazySexyCool, because apparently my family wanted me to be a hyperactive and sultry adult. I am prouder of when I bought a record player with birthday money when I was 15, and got The English Beat’s Just Can’t Stop It because it was cheap and in the “Ska and Punk” section of the record store. That was the day little Pat wanted to be a Rudie.

Amy Dittmeier

Mine was between TLC’s CrazySexyCool or Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill. Both were albums I probably shouldn’t have been jamming to that young. I remember my dad having to skip “You Oughta Know” when it played because of the awesome line “I hope you’re thinking of me when you fuck her.” I felt like a badass listening to both of those albums, though.

Josh Watkins

As a requested gift, Weird Al Yankovic’s The Food Album. The first one I bought with my own money was Stone Temple Pilots’ Purple. Whataguy.

Meghan Bongartz

The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night. I was kind of an odd child, and was a lot more interested in classic rock than anything my peers were listening to. Someone gave me a Backstreet Boys CD as a gift that same Christmas, and I gave it away.

Johnny Coconate

Don’t remember. I think it was the internet. Listened to that all the time.

Marissa Morales

For me, I have two simultaneously: No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom, and the Space Jam soundtrack. My tastes haven’t really changed. If I could do it all over again, I would. I still probably know every word to both.

Michael Alexander

Picture This by Do or Die. I saved up enough money to secretly buy it, because my mom didn’t like “all that damn cursing.” So I would use some old headphones and listen to it at night. Now that I think about it, that was my first stand against higher authority too. Thanks, Do or Die.

Dominick Mayer

The same Christmas, I got three things that have proved weirdly important over time. The first was Third Eye Blind’s self-titled debut, which I’ll forever argue is the best time capsule of what mainstream alt-rock sounded like in the 1990s, and also ruined my life when I figured out what “Semi-Charmed Life” is actually about. There was also the Batman & Robin soundtrack, which introduced me to Underworld and the Smashing Pumpkins, and the Men In Black soundtrack, which turned me on to a kind of music that my parents didn’t like and I’d never heard before: hip-hop. I directly blame the last of those for turning me into the guy who laments hip-hop’s dissimilarities to its early-90s form about 15 years later.