Steve Earle - Copperhead Road

Copperhead Road is where Steve Earle kicked open the barn door, trading Nashville polish for mandolins, bagpipes and roaring rock guitars on his 1988 third album.

Credited to Earle and his band The Dukes and co-produced with Tony Brown, the record landed somewhere between country radio and rock radio, and it found fans on both sides of the line. Earle had already proved himself a gifted storyteller, but here he let the volume match the stakes, writing about soldiers, outlaws and working people with a novelist's eye for detail.

The title track is the centrepiece, the tale of a Vietnam veteran from a family of Tennessee moonshiners who swaps the old trade for a marijuana crop. "The Devil's Right Hand" turns a pistol into a cautionary fable, and "Johnny Come Lately", recorded with The Pogues, sets a Second World War homecoming against the cold reception that greeted soldiers returning from Vietnam.

The second side softens into love songs and closes with "Nothing but a Child", a gentle nativity reflection that shows the tender heart under the leather jacket.

It remains the best-known record in a long and defiant career, and the title track still gets a room stomping more than three decades later.