Zane Lowe is an unbearably smug son of a turd and if you disagree with that statement then you’ll probably disagree with most of this article. Ever since the days when he was sitting on a badly green-screened couch, chumming up to the Foo Fighters, Lowe has maintained the air of a man whose every musical opinion is based not on a love of music, but on a love of his own opinions on music.

The Smug-Meister-General of BBC Radio 1′s musical output has a long-running tradition of forcing his opinions down the throats of his listeners by choosing a series of “Masterpiece” albums to play, in their entirety, during his show. Thankfully this only happens once a year.

However, things are different this time.

If Zane Lowe thinks that he can force his idea of what makes a musical classic down our throats then we’re going to do the same thing to our readers, hopefully making you realise that this kind of behaviour isn’t okay. We might strap you all down and force the sounds of The Sugababes’ classic “Hole In The Head” into you, or we might just leave a link and some impassioned words from our writers.

We’ll see how we feel.

For those of you who still care about what the people who employ Chris Moyles think, the Radio 1 press person wrote these words to accompany the email:

Each show will include interviews with the artists and others involved in the making of the album, giving a fascinating insight into the stories behind the songs. Zane also takes a look at how each album since its release has influenced other artists with contributors including Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Blink 182 and Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner.

Chris Martin?! BLINK 182?! ALEX TURNER?! Why, Radio 1, with these leviathans of popular music, you are truly spoiling us but what does the Git-In-Chief have to say about his little collection?

“It gets harder every year to pick them, but this year’s four albums each hold a special place in the record collections of many, whilst at the at the same time influencing on many of today’s most successful and brilliant artists.”

It gets harder because you’re trying so hard to look like you know music Zane. The identity of the albums that Lowe has chosen (by committee) isn’t a secret but we genuinely couldn’t care less what they are so you’ll have to look elsewhere for them. Sorry chumps.

Anyway, taking a leaf out of Lowe’s Big Book of Self-Importance, we’ve come up with a list of our ‘masterpiece’ albums. No committee, no real thought. Everybody in the hecklerspray bedsit got the chance to pick one. It’s only fair.

Dare – The Human League

Mof Gimmers: Synthpop was always a ludicrous (gloriously so) genre, which showcased a retrofuturism hatched up in bedsits and motorway cafes by young men with dreadful haircuts and worse clothes. Then, Phil Oakey & Co. realised that they were sitting on something that was plain futuristic and went about making one of the finest, weirdest pop albums ever made. While ‘Don’t You Want Me’ is standard wedding fodder, it’s still a bona fide masterpiece. Backed by the catchier-than-mumps ‘Love Action’, the fierce ‘Sound Of The Crowd’ and the thunderous ‘Do Or Die’, ‘Dare’ is just about the most perfect pop-art LP ever made.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Check Your Head – Beastie Boys

Si Sharp: ‘Paul’s Boutique’ may have seen them at their lyrical peak, but 1992′s Check Your Head is the grooviest hip-hop album of all time.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Lungs – Florence & The Machine

Joanna Bolouri: Original, beautiful, quirky and downright genius. An album that could bring back longing and joy to an otherwise dead heart.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Beat Me – Electric Eel Shock

Kris Silver: An album that perfectly sums up this band of Japanese outsiders, fusing pop, punk, metal and comedy to make a collection of riotous, yet still catchy, and often funny songs about everything from politics to fishing.

Listen to it on Spotify.

We Are The Pipettes – The Pipettes

Robin Darke: Failing to invigorate the market with a reinvention of the traditional 60s girl group, this album breathes a modern interpretation into a staple of Motown history; catchy, feminism-infused and highly underrated. Get them before they turn eurodance and shi…oh.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Mr Beast – Mogwai

Michael Park: Mogwai have been producing exceptional album after exceptional album right back to 1997′s ‘Young Team’ but this attempt from 2006 is one of their most accessible. Rolling crescendoes and haunting lulls, what’s not to like?

Listen to it on Spotify.

Actually – The Pet Shop Boys

Sophie Hall: It’s the one with ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This?’ on it – a song which would upgrade ‘Disappointing second Hear’say Album’ to ‘Best contribution to sound in the universe’ in a mere moment.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Hootenanny – The Replacements

Lauren Mullineaux: It might not be their finest album, but it captures a band on the brink of unappreciated greatness and showed the self-deprecating maturity of Westerberg’s lyrics.  Besides the man is a genius.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Second Toughest In The Infants – Underworld

Matthew Laidlow: Comprising multiple styles from lounge to drum & bass, progressive electro to full-on acid, Second Toughest In The Infants is an album that sounds as fresh today as when it first came out, especially when coupled with the rambling, confusing lyrics of Karl Hyde.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Get them all on one, big Spotify playlist so that you can impress people at parties.

So there you have it, readers. Nine classic albums from the furthest reaches of musical taste (and decency), all delivered to you without the need for a three hour retrospective starring Chris Martin and Alex Turner.

You might not like all of the albums on our list but do feel free to tell us your ‘masterpiece’ albums in the comments. Or slag off Zane Lowe. It’s really up to you.

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As Amy Winehouse so memorably put it in her famous hit "They tried to make me go to rehab/ I said 'wheeze gargle hurrrrrrp."

That's right – it appears that hoofing down crack and cigarettes all the time like a stinky old tramp hasn't done Amy Winehouse's lungs any good at all. According to her dad Mitch, in fact, Amy Winehouse has been diagnosed with the early stages of emphysema – a disease that'll kill her if she doesn't quit drugs immediately.

Now, obviously this isn't news because it's been discovered that Amy Winehouse is close to death – any fool has been able to see that for the last year or so – but because her contraction of emphysema has helped us complete our Amy Winehouse Disease Bingo card! Hooray! Now we just have to decide whether we go double or quits with weaponised Marburg. She doesn't already have that, does she?

Amy Winehouse is like a walking medical encyclopedia, albeit a walking encyclopedia that you don't want to touch in case it gives you headlice or bellows the word 'Blake' at you for an hour and a half until you forget what you wanted from it. Anyway, our point – we think – was that Amy Winehouse knows a lot about disease.

For starters Amy Winehouse's skin is apparently riddled with impetigo, plus she once contracted the rare disorder of taking too many drugs and almost dying – and now it's her lungs that are all effed up.

You see, Amy Winehouse's father has told the world that his daughter has emphysema. It's a cruel illness, striking down any number of people, so long as they're elderly soap opera actresses who smoke an irresponsible amount of cigarettes during their lifetime. And Amy Winehouse, too, apparently. BBC News reports:

Mitch Winehouse told the Sunday Mirror his daughter has early stage emphysema and an irregular heartbeat. "Doctors have told her if she goes back to smoking drugs, it won't just ruin her voice, it will kill her," he said. "With smoking the crack cocaine and the cigarettes her lungs are all gunked up. There are nodules around the chest and dark marks. She's got 70% lung capacity."

That's actually quite serious-sounding. Still, hopefully the early diagnosis combined with her father's insistence on repeatedly humiliating her in public will force Amy Winehouse to dramatically change her ways before it's too late. After all, if we can say anything about Amy Winehouse it's that she always learns from her mistakes.

Wait, no, what we meant to say was that if we can say anything about Amy Winehouse it's that she never learns anything, not even in the face of serious life or death consequences, and she's doomed to repeat the same mistakes time and time again until she inevitably messes her life up beyond repair. Yeah, that scans better.

Anyway, if Amy Winehouse can successfully combat her emphysema now, perhaps she can go on to become a spokesperson for young women who keep catching diseases traditionally reserved for the elderly. After all, just think of the awareness that can be raised for the likes of The Association For Gout-Stricken Teenagers or Incontinence Pants For The Under-25s with a megastar like Amy Winehouse onboard.