Three albums in my top 13 were released in 1992. As I’ve written more than a few times on this blog, that year was a musical touchstone for me in large part because it was a year of major life changes.

Two of the albums from ’92 that appear here are excellent in their own right but wouldn’t necessarily have earned a spot in the top 20 if they didn’t have such powerful personal associations. The third scores very high on both the personal and artistic scale, but I’ll get to that one in due time.

Morrissey’s Your Arsenal was his third solo album but his first major stylistic shift. It features heavy guitars and driving drums in place of the acoustic moping of his first two efforts (which are excellent albums in their own right, don’t get me wrong).

I’ve always been drawn to the confident theatricality of this album, as on the haunting ‘We’ll Let You Know’ — a depiction of soccer hooligans that drifts from elegance to cacophony — and the tear-fest ‘Seasick, Yet Still Docked,’ which is carried along on a mournful bass line that sounds like the footsteps of a man going to bed alone for the thousandth night in a row.

Elsewhere, Morrissey’s playful sense of humor is in full effect. Who else would record songs with titles like ‘We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful’ and ‘You’re the One For Me, Fatty’? And the rockabilly sound of today’s SOTD is just delicious.

Morrissey never put out another album as good as this one. He didn’t have to.