Searching for origin stories in music is often a ceaseless chase through history. Art is rarely created in a vacuum, meaning musicians – however original their work might be – are inherently influenced by others who came before them. Even the freshest of tunes are, via their composers’ experiences, part homage.

There are, though, certain musicians that stand out as pioneers – ones whose special talents or against-the-grain styles became premonition points for where music was going. Whether this meant furthering a fledgling genre or incorporating new techniques and instruments into existing ones, here are ten examples of musicians ahead of their time, in chronological order.

10 Rock And Metal Musicians Who Killed Someone

10 Charlie Christian Electrifies Jazz

Benny Goodman, the jazz clarinetist whose bandleading skills earned him the nickname “The King of Swing,” was unconvinced. In 1939, his group was among the most popular in the U.S., and he wasn’t keen on fixing something that wasn’t broke. So when an associate asked him to consider adding a talented young musician – an afficionado of the them-fledgling electric guitar – Goodman was disinterested.

Luckily for jazz fans, talent scout John Hammond insisted. During a break at a concert in Beverly Hills, Hammond, as clandestinely as possible, slid Christian onto the stage and into the band. When Goodman noticed, he started playing a ditty called “Rose Room” that he assumed Christian didn’t know. He was wrong, and the epic wail that followed made Christian a band member and, shortly thereafter, the electric guitar a popular mainstay in jazz starting in the early 1940s.

Both “Rose Room” and “Solo Flight”, Christian’s other major showpiece with the Benny Goodman Band, displayed the sort of intuitive swing and fluid single-note runs that came to define the electric guitar’s contribution to the genre. Notably, his playing also was decidedly horn-like, so much so that people who heard (but not saw) him play often thought he was playing the saxophone.^[1]

Unfortunately, Christian didn’t get to witness the outsized influence he’d have on jazz. He died in 1942, of tuberculosis, at just 25 years old.

9 John Fahey: Complex Simplicity

The music of acoustic guitarist John Fahey went beyond original and unique; it was flat-out weird. The aural equivalent of leftovers’ night, his style basically threw everything in a pot, simmered their disparate flavors into each other and served it. Starting with a base of folk and blues – in fact, Fahey’s style has been described as American Primitive,^[2] a term coined to define a self-taught, minimalist style prominent in those genres – his music incorporated everything from Eastern ragas and cosmic psychedelia to soaring modern classical and eerie funereal notes.

Despite the myriad influences, the sound itself was oxymoronically simple: sometimes invented on the spot, Fahey’s brilliance typically played out on an unaccompanied steel-string acoustic guitar. The complex yet graceful improvisations, which Fahey claims incorporated both psychological and spiritual elements, have made many see him as one of the founders of a sub-genre known as New Age music.^[3]

Fahey the man was as strange as Fahey the musician. His dark sense of humor included his adoption of an alter ego, Blind Joe Death (which was also the title of his 1959 debut album), and a habit of schizophrenic song titles like “The Waltz That Carried Us Away And Then A Mosquito Came and Ate Up My Sweetheart.”

8 James Jamerson: The Electric Bassist That Powered Motown

“James who?” you ask? James Jamerson: the long-unheralded electric bass pioneer who, along with his studio band, The Funk Brothers, played on more #1 hit records than The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, and Elvis Presley… combined.^[4]

You may not recognize James Jamerson’s name… but you recognize James Jamerson. Think of the bass riff that opens up The Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love,” or The Temptations’ “My Girl.” That beautiful booming rhythm that owns the soundstage before the singer starts belting… that’s James Jamerson.

Before coming to Motown, Jamerson was a jazz player – a genre where he perfected a plucky, punchy style of play that helped so many hits pop through the radio waves. As prolific as he was gifted, Jamerson was featured on a broad array of hits from Motown’s heyday but, per the label’s habit of keeping its musicians in the shadows, wasn’t even listed on an album until megastar Marvin Gaye made sure he got credit for “What’s Going On”.

Jamerson was among the first to deviate from his bass-playing contemporaries, who generally stuck to more conventional roots and fifths.^[5] By roaming into more adventurous harmonic territory, Jamerson created counterpoint lines with vocalists – an innovation that led to his well-earned nickname: The Hook.

7 Black Sabbath: Metal Pioneers Turned Megastars

It’s tempting to play popularity contrarian and reach back past Ozzy and his bandmates for some arcane examples of now-obscure headbangers. But sometimes the ones that did it first did it well enough that they became megastars; such was the case with Black Sabbath. While deep guitar riffs and scream singing were around before 1970 – Jimi Hendrix, The Who – it was Black Sabbath who, according to music journalist Noah Lefevre, “showed the world what metal was”.^[6]

The group’s self-titled debut album – released on February 13, 1970 (purposefully or not, a Friday) – cracked the top 10 on the UK Albums Chart and peaked at #23 on the US Billboard Chart. In fact, the album did so well that its follow-up, Paranoid, was delayed because its predecessor was still selling.

It was worth the wait: per AllMusic’s Steve Huey, Paranoid – which featured legendary hits “Iron Man” and the anti-Vietnam “War Pigs” – was “one of the greatest and most influential heavy metal albums of all time,” which “defined the sound and style of heavy metal more than any other record in rock history.”

Black Sabbath’s immediate commercial success was made more impressive because, in true ahead-of-its-time fashion, the band’s early work received negative reviews from many music critics. This included Rolling Stone, which entirely missed the point of the nascent genre by calling the debut album “discordant,” “velocitized” and “never quite finding synch.” Well, duh.

6 Kraftwerk: 80s Music in the 70s

Plenty of eras have acts that seemed to preview where music is headed. A good example is R.E.M., a band that broke through at the height of 1980s hair band glam rock with a trend-pointing alternative vibe. However, the German band Kraftwerk might be the starkest example of decade-previewing clairvoyance, not because of their outsized talent but rather the era in which they did it.

In 1978, disco was king, and an understandably disgusted music counterculture gravitated to punk rock as its polar opposite; you can’t get much further apart than The Bee Gees and The Ramones. In between was a mix of new wave and traditional rock & roll. Nobody was truly capturing that one remarkable calling card of the 1980s: cheesy, perky pop.

The 70s didn’t really have a Safety Dance moment: a dorky but oddly appealing hit providing a sneak peak of corny-yet-catchy 80s pop. But it did have Kraftwerk – who, despite middling-at-best commercial success,^[7] are considered pioneers of electronic music. Above is a particularly weird gem from 1978, called Die Roboter.

Top 10 Criminals That Changed Music History

5 Blondie: Hip-Hop Hero?

Like most genres, hip-hop has many pioneers along its road from underground to mainstream. Arguably the most prominent of these influences was a song that, way back in 1979, helped give the genre its name; this was Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” whose opening riff sent fans to record stores asking for “that ‘hip hop’ song.” The anthem peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Chart, and was lauded by US National Public Radio as among the 20th Century’s most influential songs.^[8]

A less likely fanner of the fledgling hip-hop flame was a white girl named Debbie Harry, lead singer of punk-turned-new wave band Blondie. Interestingly, Harry actually had a connection to Rapper’s Delight: in 1978, Blondie was performing with the funk group Chic in New York when several members of Sugarhill Gang began freestyling over Chic’s “Good Times,” whose bass became the hit rap song’s beat.

The next year, Blondie released “Rapture,” credited as the first major hip-hop hit to use original music^[9] rather than sampled beats. Powered by Harry’s lilting singing, Rapture also became the first #1 song to incorporate a rap element.

Unfortunately, Harry’s emcee skills make Vanilla Ice look like Biggie Smalls. Per songfacts.com,^[10] “Harry’s rap is so goofy that it sounds like she could be mocking the genre.” However, during hip-hop’s early days, the sort of simple, random lyrics like Harry’s “man from Mars eating cars” were typical of the still-evolving art.

4 Schoolly D

Five years after Blondie busted such memorable rhymes as “and you get in your car and you drive real far,” Philadelphia-born Jesse Bonds Weaver, Jr., a.k.a. Schoolly D, gave hip-hop an edgier tone that better reflected the lives of urban minorities in America. Blending impoverished realism with violence, drug use and a dash of sexual bravado, Schoolly D is considered by many the Founding Father of gangster rap.

Among the trio of singles from Schoolly D’s self-titled 1985 debut album was “P.S.K. What Does It Mean?” It meant Park Side Killas, a street gang with which Schoolly D was affiliated. In a storytelling fashion now ingrained in the genre, Schoolly D invites listeners along as he smokes weed, gets laid, and threatens to shoot a “sucka-ass n-gga” trying to kick rhymes as fresh as his.

Several gangster rappers name Schoolly D as an important inspiration, including Ice T, Public Enemy and N.W.A. However, while his subject matter was ahead of its time, Schoolly D’s rap skills were not; typical of the mid-1980s – still very much hip-hop’s infancy – his songs largely comprise simple, often clunkily-cadenced rhymes that don’t hold up to legends like Ice Cube, Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur who would soon take gangster rap fully into the mainstream. Schoolly D recorded a total of eight albums, none of which achieved commercial success.

3 Edie Brickell: Seattle by Way of Texas

Perhaps the most unorthodox preview of the 1990s Seattle sound was provided by a woman from Texas. In 1988, alternative rock band Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians released their sophomore album, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars. The album peaked at #4 in the U.S., and its lead single, “What I Am”, cracked the Top 10 on the US Billboard Chart.

Shooting Rubberbands isn’t exactly grunge, but it certainly isn’t metal or glam rock. It stands proudly genre-less amid its contemporaries, an album’s worth of songs saying “maybe we can be a little more low key and dressed down here.” The video for “What I Am” reinforces this refreshing chillness, featuring Brickell breezing around a simple stage, sans the teased hair, leopard-patterned clothing and pyrotechnics common to videos of that era.

While certainly pioneering, Brickell and her band had good company. That same year, Perry Farrell’s trendsetting band Jane’s Addiction released its first major studio album, Nothing Shocking, featuring the classic hit “Jane Says.” Meanwhile the Red Hot Chili Peppers, though not yet commercially successful, had released three albums by 1987.

2 Rage Against the Machine: Hip-Hop Meets Hard Rock

Like Black Sabbath in the heavy metal genre, Rage Against the Machine is both the first and best band their genre, rock-rap, has ever seen. Of course, considering their contenders in this mashup genre include the earplug-inspiring Limp Bizkit and Lincoln Park, that’s not exactly a controversial statement.

With funk-derived beats, the all-time-great-caliber guitar prowess of Tom Morello^[11] and the angry reality rap of frontman Zack de la Rocha, RATM sounded different than anything before it, as relevant as any band during its decade-long run, and flat-out better than any band attempting to combine rock and rap since. Released in late 1992 during the height of the grunge era – and when white youths were starting to buy rap music en masse – the band’s self-titled debut album shot to Number 1 on the U.S. Billboard Chart on the strength of hits like “Killing in the Name,” “Bullet in the Head” and “Take the Power Back”.

It wasn’t just the band’s style that was a stark departure from the Nirvanas and Pearl Jams of the world. Amid a sea of inward-looking alternative music and violent gangster rap, RATM’s calling card was righteous vitriol, with de la Rocha’s inventive wordplay spewing venom against the U.S. government’s treatment of minorities (especially Native Americans), corporate greed and white supremacy. RATM influenced many bands associated with the “Nu Metal” subgenre popular in the mid-to-late 1990s, most prominently Korn.

1 Mann vs (Music) Machine

Save for her stint as singer for the one-hit-wonder 80s band Till Tuesday, Aimee Mann might be the best female musician most people have never heard of. After departing Till Tuesday as a spikey-haired new waver in the spirit of Cyndi Lauper, Mann pivoted to folk-rock and into the musical hinterlands; her first two solo albums, 1993’s “Whatever” and 1995’s “I’m With Stupid,” received critical acclaim but not commercial success.

Mann then did something truly groundbreaking: she told three major labels – Imago, Geffen and Interscope – to go to hell, and not only lived to sing the tale but significantly bolstered her popularity. She became, per the Washington Post, Her Own Mann,^[12] a light-rock rebel who started drawing audiences as much for her tea-in-the-harbor defiance than her prowess as a singer/songwriter.

In 1999 – the same year she founded her own label, Superego – Mann was nominated for an Oscar for “Save Me” (above), from the soundtrack for the film Magnolia. Since then, she has released seven solo albums and, defying Father Time as well as convention, gotten better with age: her latest release, 2017’s Mental Illness, won a Grammy for Best Folk Album.

Despite recording exactly zero top ten hits^[13] in her career, Mann, who turns 60 this year, still sells out concert halls in her native US and abroad – a rare example of a female artist thriving despite flouting the modern music machine.

10 Crazy Conspiracy Theories Clouding The Music Industry

Sometimes, an idea is so brilliant that it changes the world immediately. Sometimes, it takes a little longer. In fact, a great concept may take millennia to catch on.

So don’t be too disappointed if your genius notion doesn’t impress people straightaway. It’ll get there even if you’re no longer around to see it. Here are 10 ideas that were way ahead of their time.

10 World-Famous Ideas That Started As Dreams

10 Unbreakable Glass

Glass is an excellent invention. Not only is it good for storing food and drink, it can also be decorated to make a luxury item. Discovered around 3600 BC in Mesopotamia, glass was only found in the hands of the elite at first. Given its fragility and the difficulty of its production, glass seemed destined to remain an expensive and rare material.

One invention may have changed that, however. According to Pliny the Elder, an inventor presented himself to Roman Emperor Tiberius with a curious discovery. The clever man had invented an unbreakable, flexible form of glass.^[1]

In another account, Tiberius was given a new glass cup that was pretty but nothing special in his estimation. After Tiberius handed it back to the inventor, the glassmaker threw the cup on the floor. To the emperor’s astonishment, it was not smashed but merely slightly dented. Surely, the man was made for life?

In a sense, he was. But it was not a long life.

Apparently, Tiberius was concerned that this discovery would destroy the value of silver and gold, so he had the inventor beheaded. While Pliny thought this story was unlikely, some researchers believe the man may have invented an early form of the shatterproof borosilicate glass used today.

9 Atoms

What happens if you take a piece of cake and cut it? You get two smaller bits of cake. What if you slice it again? And again?

For most thinkers in the ancient world, there was no end to the amount of cutting you could do. No matter how much you sliced, there was always a smaller piece of cake—like a terribly disappointing birthday party. But to Democritus and Leucippus, there was an “uncuttable,” smallest piece of cake. The Greek for “uncuttable” is atomos, from which we get the word “atom.”^[2]

According to these philosophers, atoms come in a variety of forms. By mixing these different types of atoms, all visible matter is created. Today, we might call these mixtures molecules. Despite being first postulated in the fifth century BC, the existence of atoms was still doubted by some people even at the end of the 19th century AD.

There were even hints of quantum theory in the ancient world. According to Epicurus, atoms moved in straight lines when nothing was acting on them, but they occasionally “swerved” at random.

8 Vending Machines

If we come up with one good idea in a lifetime, then most of us would be satisfied. But there are some lucky people who are just brimming with genius.

Heron of Alexandria was one of those individuals whose every idle thought seems to have been a stroke of inspiration. Living in the first century AD, he invented many things that would not be seen again for nearly 2,000 years.

One of his first ideas brought science and religion together in a very pleasing way. Holy water has long been a feature of religious worship. In the ancient world, you had to pay for this water. But even under the eyes of the gods, some people would steal more than they paid for. Heron was on the case, however.^[3]

He created the first vending machine. A worshipper deposited a coin into a slot, and this moved a lever that opened a pipe. Then the water flowed out. Once the coin fell into the machine, the water stopped. Every worshipper got the water he paid for, and the temple received all the money it was due.

7 Automatic Doors

Seven of the books written by Heron of Alexandria still exist, and they are full of amazing inventions. Some of his ideas were designed to seem miraculous. Although we associate automatic doors with shops, Heron hoped to startle worshippers when he created automatic doors for a temple.

In Heron’s design, the doors of the temple would not open when just anyone approached. They would only open when a fire was lit on an altar. The heat of the fire warmed the air held in the hollow altar, and the expanding air drove water into a bucket. The heavy bucket pulled on a rope and opened the doors.^[4]

Today, we might be more impressed by automatic doors if we had a priest light a fire and chant as we walked toward the doors.

6 Steam Power

Heron was not satisfied with religious tricks. One of his inventions might have truly revolutionized the world. The industrial revolution of the 18th century in Europe could have happened hundreds of years earlier if Heron’s steam-powered inventions had taken off.

Heron understood that water expands when it is turned into steam. He created an object called the aeolipile from a hollow ball and a few pipes. By producing steam and forcing it out of the pipes, the hollow ball would spin rapidly. Heron had invented the first steam engine.^[5]

Unfortunately, the aeolipile remained a mere curiosity and was largely forgotten.

10 Supposedly Good Ideas That Backfired

5 Contact Lenses

Pairs of glasses worn on the face to help people see were first used in Italy in the 13th century. As all individuals who wear glasses can tell you in this age of face masks, there are drawbacks to wearing glasses on your nose. Wouldn’t it be much simpler if you could just pop the lenses into your eyes?

In 1508, Leonardo da Vinci wrote a treatise that described how plunging your head into water changes how you see. He came up with funnels tipped with lenses and filled with water that could be attached over the eyes. They were not practical.

Rene Descartes thought of a simpler version. Why not fill a glass tube with water and attach it straight to the eyeball? These lenses would have been the first to be directly in contact with the eye. Unfortunately, they would also have stopped you from blinking.^[6]

To improve Descartes’s design, Thomas Young reduced the length of the glass tubes so that the eyelids could close. But to get them to stay in place, he did have to use wax to stick them to the eyebal . . . Contact lenses were a good idea, but technology just had not caught up.

4 Underfloor Heating

Fires are romantic things. On a winter night, it is lovely to sit and watch one. But they are incredibly inefficient at heating a home.

Most of the heat goes up the chimney. Those close to the fire can be burned on the parts near the fire and freezing on their backs. The Romans were not ones to let this inefficiency stand—they invented a method of centrally heating their homes.

When they built their villas, they first created a hollow space under the ground. These spaces were supported by tiles with large gaps between them.

Known as hypocausts, these structures allowed hot air to pass through them. A fire was channeled into the hypocaust, and the hot air warmed the home from below. The air was also drawn through channels in the walls. So the whole home was warmed and not just the parts near the fire.^[7]

When the Roman Empire collapsed, hypocausts went out of fashion and Europe became a much chillier place to live for hundreds of years.

3 Flushing Toilets

Toilets are always a good idea. Contact with human waste is one of the best ways to catch a nasty illness, so trying to move sewage away from where you live should be obvious.

For most of human history, the best that someone could do was wander a little way from his home to use a toilet that was little more than a hole in the ground. Often, the toilet in the home was just a pottery vessel that had to be emptied into the street.

In 1700 BC in the Minoan Palace of Crete, toilets were created that used running water to carry away the sewage. This incredible palace may have been the first place to have flushing toilets.

Communal toilets with long banks of seats and running water remained in existence for centuries, but we would have to wait for the modern flushing toilet to come into the home. And the invention of soft toilet paper.^[8]

2 Computer

In 1822, Charles Babbage presented a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society in London. Called “Note on the Application of Machinery to the Computation of Astronomical and Mathematical Tables,” it was nothing less than his idea for a mechanical computer.

At the time, long calculations were made easier by having hefty tomes filled with tables of mathematical results. To avoid errors in these vital tables and to do them faster than humans, Babbage had invented a machine to do repetitive calculations.^[9]

Babbage’s difference engine would have been a marvel. Made from 8,000 parts cast in bronze and weighing five tons, this hand-cranked contraption would have churned out all the mathematical results you could ever want. It even printed out the answers of the calculations fed into it.

Unfortunately, the difference engine was never completed. Despite the astronomical amount of £17,000 given to him by the British government, Babbage was unable to build a working model.

It was only in the 1990s that Babbage’s designs were actually made. Like the answers churned out by his machine, it turned out that Babbage had calculated correctly—his difference engine would have worked.

1 Computers (Again)

Charles Babbage’s metal calculating machine was not the first of its kind, but it took researchers some time to work this out. After corroded and encrusted lumps of metal were pulled from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Antikythera in 1900, historians were puzzled by what they might be. These green fragments would have to wait until they were probed with X-rays to reveal their secrets.

The Antikythera mechanism, as these fragments were named, consisted of at least 30 metal cogs that had been housed in a wooden box. The device was made around 100 BC.

The interlocking wheels were marked with symbols that could be read by the user and used to calculate the positions of the Sun, Moon, and planets. By turning the wheels, you could get the mechanism to tell you what the heavens would look like on any given night.

Some of the dials were marked with balls representing the heavenly objects they tracked—for example, a golden Sun and a red Mars. The mechanism could even predict lunar and solar eclipses.^[10]

Nothing else like the Antikythera mechanism has ever been found. Ancient writers hint at objects that could model the night sky, but these items seem to have been completely lost from history. Perhaps other ancient inventions lie at the bottom of the sea just waiting to surprise us.

10 Lucrative Ideas Sold For Almost Nothing

Over the years, many filmmakers have tried to break the mold and do something new. Only the best have created something that has left its mark on the entertainment industry and society.

Here, we’ll focus on movies with a human cast, so, unfortunately, there is no room for animation. We’ve chosen the listed movies because they had at least one characteristic that made them stand out to influence future writers, directors, and actors. Unfortunately, some worthy candidates had to be left out because of the need to prepare only a list of ten. So, for now, here are 10 movies that were ahead of their time.

10 The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Nowadays, many people won’t watch The Birth of a Nation due to its hatred and treatment of Black people. Originally called The Clansman, the movie sees the Ku Klux Klan as a force for good in American society. In the film, the Klan was portrayed as protecting American values and women, keeping Black citizens in their place.

As expected, and rightfully so, The NAACP organized protests at theaters, and many critics were disturbed by the film’s narrative. Even so, the film was hugely successful.

Directed by D.W. Griffith (1875–1948), the film broke new ground in many ways. First, it was a very long movie for the time period, running over three hours long. Second, it introduced the use of close-ups and fadeouts; it was called “The World’s Mightiest Spectacle.” Considering the movie came out in 1915, it was technically far ahead of anything else.

9 Ecstasy (1933)

Hedwig Kiesler, soon to be known in Hollywood as Hedy Lamarr (1914–2000), was 18 when Czech director Gustav Kiesler cast her as the female lead in Ecstasy. The story is common enough—a young woman trapped in a loveless marriage with an older man who takes a lover.

What was startling was the fact that the film depicted sexual intercourse and showed Lamarr in the throes of orgasm. Only pornographic films had ever done such a thing before. In Europe, critics said that the movie was artistic. In the United States, it was banned.

As a side note, and with nothing to do with Ecstasy, I can’t resist mentioning that Lamarr was also a genius. During the Second World War, she took time off selling war bonds to work on the enemy’s ability to jam radio torpedoes.

Despite having no professional training, she worked on frequency-hopping technology with a pianist and a radio-electrical engineer. The U.S. Navy didn’t adopt her system, but some of her insights are used today in Bluetooth and GPS technology. She is in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

8 The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Usually, analysts measure a movie’s success by how much it grossed at the box office. This isn’t surprising because movies are commercial ventures. But knowing the number of people who paid to see a film can’t tell us if the film is any good or not. Its success might be down to good marketing, or it might be popular with kids but not adults.

In 2018, researchers at the University of Turin used a different measurement. Using a database of 47,000 movies, they looked at how many times a film mentioned another film. The clear winner was The Wizard of Oz.

L. Frank Baum’s original novel came out in 1900. Generally, people thought of it as a children’s story, but some read it as an allegory dealing with current problems. When the film hit theaters in 1939, cinemagoers saw the same ambiguity. On one level, it could be seen as an adventure for children; on another, it reflects American difficulties at the time. The movie operates on both levels, and filmmakers have been trying to recapture its magic ever since.

7 Citizen Kane (1941)

Many people will claim that Citizen Kane is the best movie of all time. Orson Welles produced, directed, and starred in the film, and much of its technical and narrative brilliance is down to his vision. Critics and industry insiders loved the film and nominated it for nine Academy Awards. However, it wasn’t an immediate box office hit.

At the time, most movies followed a simple narrative. They began at the beginning and trotted along to the end of the story ninety minutes later. This movie was different. It told Charles Foster Kane’s story from various viewpoints and moved backward and forward in time. It demanded its audience’s attention, and a movie-goer could watch it multiple times and get something new out of it every time. You can see its influence on movies such as Pulp Fiction.

The cinematography contributed much to the movie’s success. Gregg Toland used various unusual techniques to add visual depth to the storyline.

6 Psycho (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece still has the power to frighten an audience today. Cinemagoers settling in to watch the film might have assumed that the story would focus on the embezzler, Marion. But this was a red herring. Hitchcock said, “They thought the story was about a girl who stole $40,000. And suddenly, out of the blue, she is stabbed to death.”

We know that the unfortunate Marion had fled to Norman Bates’s motel. Bates stabs her in the infamous shower scene early on, and the hunt for an embezzler becomes a psychological horror film. The fact that Marion was a thief is incidental; she could have been a hairdresser.

The shower scene shows the care that Hitchcock invested in the movie. It has 90 different breaks in around 45 seconds as the camera quickly switches from one angle to another. It’s a tense, tightly-focused movie that other moviemakers have tried to emulate—usually failing to do so.

5 Jaws (1975)

This classic emerged in 1975 before computer-generated imagery could help with special effects. The tension builds throughout the movie, mainly because we don’t get a good look at the shark until about halfway in. Yet this was accidental; the props were waterlogged and unusable, so director Steven Spielberg made do with shots of just the shark’s fin.

The film launched Spielberg’s career—he was only 26 when he directed Jaws and was fairly inexperienced. Perhaps his relative youth meant he could take a new approach and get away with it.

Everything about the movie was just about perfect. The cast, the music, the building tension, and the tight storyline combine to make a classic film. How influential Jaws was can be seen in the number of movies that have copied the idea. Similar plotlines with similar characters appear repeatedly, but none quite recapture Jaws’s tension and iconic nature.

4 Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

French New Wave cinema had a significant influence on Bonnie and Clyde. In its turn, Bonnie and Clyde had a great influence on Hollywood. This 1967 movie was directed by Arthur Penn and starred Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty with a strong supporting cast.

So what made Bonnie and Clyde stand out from the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Hollywood movies about depression-era gangsters? The answer lies in the embellishment of a true story. The film tossed convention aside and glorified sex and violence.

In this film, the gangsters are not shown as simply bad people. They are depicted as morally ambiguous, with a depth to their character that other films in the same genre didn’t reveal. It’s a stance that other filmmakers were to copy again and again. Perhaps one of the best examples is Quentin Tarantino.

3 Pulp Fiction (1994)

It’s not unusual to find a film that ends where it begins. Most of the movie then consists in explaining how the characters got there. The restaurant scene in Pulp Fiction frames the rest of the movie; it’s true. But the moment when Pumpkin and Honey Bunny try to hold up a diner where a tired Jules and Vincent are in no mood to give in to a pair of street hoodlums is not the beginning nor the end of the story.

Quentin Tarantino has created a movie that shifts from story to story, leaves questions unanswered (What exactly is in the briefcase?), and uses well-crafted, often funny dialogue that seems incidental to the plot but actually draws us along and gives the characters greater depth.

It’s a film that demands a lot from its audience. Only Tarantino could have made it work as well as it does.

2 Star Wars (1977)

Only 42 theaters showed the first Star Wars movie when it came out in 1977. Since then, George Lucas has built a phenomenal empire of his own.

The opening crawl sequence of the original movie begins with the line: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..” This opening scene is one iconic key to Star Wars’ success and a move many other filmmakers have copied. In setting his story in a new galaxy, George Lucas had given himself the opportunity to invent a series of interlocking histories with limitless plotlines.

The first movie is beautifully made and directed. It has a strong storyline and a great cast. But Lucas saw the opportunity to create a franchise and sell merchandise that many others have copied—but none with his amazing success.

1 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is a visual masterpiece. The long opening sequence that shows apes discovering an extra-terrestrial sentry has only grunts as dialogue. Even when modern humans appear on the scene, their conversation adds nothing to the storyline. It is a movie to watch rather than listen to.

Kubrick, and his special-effects man, Douglas Trumball, borrowed technology from wherever they could find it and introduced innovative new ideas of their own. The result is a film that is stunning to watch, and that has stood the test of time. Indeed, it’s still as fresh today as when it came out in 1968, well over 50 years ago.

To make such a compelling movie without the benefit of modern technology is a work of genius.