Vinyl Me - Vinyl Me, Please: 100 Albums You Need in Your Collection

Tyler Barstow is the co-founder of Vinyl Me, Please and their head of content. Hes a bargain-bin Matt Berninger and likes listening to people talk about space. He hopes one day to be a quarter of the writer Lorrie Moore is.

Donivan Berube quit his job in 2013 and put his apartment into storage to travel and live out of a tent. He makes music as Blessed Feathers.

Tom Breihan is the senior editor at Stereogum, and hes written for Grantland, GQ, Slate, The A.V. Club, Pitchfork, and the Village Voice, among others. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Matthew Davis (MD) is the label manager of Flying Nun Records, as well as the chairman of Independent Music New Zealand (IMNZ). He was instrumental in the labels rejuvenation in 2011. A keen indoor-cricket player, Matthew retired from the Mt Vic Division-3 team with a strike rate of 109 and an average of 41.

Michael Depland is the music editor at UPROXX. He resides in New York City, but only until Texas calls him back home. He can easily be bribed with the promise of breakfast tacos or fresh biscuits.

Tyler Hayes is obsessed with technology and music, both individually and how they intertwine. He has written extensively for Fast Company, Paste, and lots of other publications about the two industries.

Chris Lay is a freelance writer, archivist, and record-store clerk living in Madison, Wisconsin. The first CD he bought for himself was the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack when he was 12, and things only got better from there.

Andrew Martin is a freelance music writer (and full-time content marketing manager) residing in Raleigh, North Carolina. He spends his free time building his jazz and hip-hop vinyl collection, slogging through his videogame queue, and hanging out with his wife and their two cats.

Drew Millard is a writer/editor/journalist/critic/blogger living in Los Angeles. He owns one (1) dog, one (1) hoverboard, and just three (3) screw tapes.

Ben Munson is a full-time editor, freelance writer, and former city editor for The A.V. Club Madison. He prefers 90s R&B when hes cooking and dreams of the day hell be able to hand down his Beatnuts records to his daughter.

Andy OConnors mom bought him a copy of Fargo Rock City during his freshman year of high school, hoping he would become the next Klosterman and bring honor to the OConnor name. Instead, hes a metal critic who lives in Austin, Texas. At least hes the best metal critic living in Austin.

Michael Penn II (rap name CRASHprez) is a 22-year-old hip-hop artist, journalist, facilitator, and curator from a suburb of black folks called Fort Washington, Maryland. He spent his four undergrad years in Wisconsinthrough the First Wave scholarshipsearching for the perfect chicken spot and learning to turn shit up on the page and on the stage.

Geoff Rickly is the former and current singer of bands Thursday, United Nations, Ink & Dagger, and No Devotion. Hes a bass player in NARX, a producer of My Chemical Romance, and a music lover.

Sarah Sahim is a UK-based freelance pop culture writer. Her work has previously appeared in Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, the Guardian, and others.

Cameron Schaefer is head of music and label relations for Vinyl Me, Please. A former Air Force pilot, he now lives in Louisville, Colorado, with his wife, three children, and records.

Levi J Sheppard and Joshua Lingenfelter grew up listening to music together from a very early ageplaying pony-league baseball and hustling Columbia House record club using fake names for countless introductory offers. These days they still talk music nearly every day; Josh plays Aphex Twin as background music in the Advanced Placement Literature class he teaches, and Levi moonlights as a pilot in the Royal Air Force when hes not hanging around Vinyl Me, Please headquarters.

Jes Skolnik is the managing editor at Bandcamp and has regularly contributed writing to publications like Pitchfork, Flavorwire, and Paper. One of many, many people to have had their life fundamentally altered by punk, Jes plays in the band Split Feet and works on making DIY art spaces better places to be for everyone.

Gary Suarez is a music and culture writer, born, raised, and based in New York City. He has contributed to a variety of publications, including Billboard, Complex, Forbes, Noisey, The Quietus, and Vulture, among others.

Eric Sundermann is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York, who currently works as editor-in-chief of Noisey, VICEs music channel. Originally from Iowa, and a proud graduate of the University of Iowa, hes been writing about musicboth for money and for free recordsfor nearly a decade, and his work has appeared in the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, SPIN, and more. One time, A$AP Rocky told him he has British-guy swag.

Zach Swiecki is a graduate student living in Madison, Wisconsin. When he is not doing academic work, he is thinking about maybe trying to write something about music.

Caitlin White is a music and culture writer living in Brooklyn, New York. Her favorite Bob Dylan album is Empire Burlesque.

Andrew Winistorfer is assistant editor of content for Vinyl Me, Please, whose work has appeared in Noisey, VICE, The A.V. Club, Guerilla Newspaper (the underground newspaper he started in high school that almost got him suspended multiple times), and elsewhere. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with his girlfriend, their expanding collection of Ludacris and Nelly records, and their dog.

Luke Winkie is a writer and former pizza maker living in the hills of Los Angeles. You can read his work in VICE, Rolling Stone, Gawker, and everywhere else good content is found.

Susannah Young is a displaced Tennessean living in Chicago, Illinois, with her charming boyfriend (also a displaced Tennessean) and bossy rabbit, whose writing has appeared in Pitchfork, Under the Radar, and the International Journal of Arts Management, among other places. By day, shes a communications consultant to nonprofit organizationswhich is an obtuse, corporate-speak way of describing her actual job: showing nonprofits how to talk about themselves in ways that make rich folks care about the specific ways said nonprofits propose saving the world.

I want to believe were living in a time when irony is being put out to pasture. So many of our most important words are regaining their single-entendre strength. I want to believe that phrases like I love you, its beautiful, and that was worth it are beginning to be less of a barricade against loneliness and more of a rich, generous truth; less hungry-eyed insistence, and more good-hearted fact. I want to believe that because, while the Internet Age has been wonderful in many ways, its been exhausting in many more. As the adage goes, for as much information as we have about the world around us now, we know less about ourselves and the ones we love. And it shows. Its harder to untangle ourselves from the myriad possible lives parading through our minds and commit to one in the real world. It feels scarier to put down roots.