All original artwork by our favorite evil genius, Joseph Devens.
Update: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 5
I've always thought there should be a TV series about going to shows. It's an inherently distinctive ritual performed by interesting characters and regularly featuring any variety of musical and circumstantial entertainment that ranges from the revelatory to the disastrous. It practically writes itself.
The live music experience was a formative part of this decade for us, and one of our great pleasures this year was to bring you coverage of three major festivals live and in color. Today we dedicate the 40-21 block of albums in our Top 100 countdown to our favorite concerts of the era.
- We were awestruck by Kanye at the Frank Erwin Center stop of the Glow in the Dark tour.
- We watched MIA become one of her generation's most magnetic rock stars at Voodoo fest in New Orleans.
- We got rained out and saw Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs felate her microphone at Bonnaroo.
- We took shots with Clipse and The Cool Kids at SXSW'08.
- We ogled James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem at CMJ.
- We got swept away by Bloc Party and Broken Social Scene at ACL.
- And we couldn't believe our good fortune at seeing Thom Yorke and Zach De La Rocha in the flesh at Lollapalooza.
Here's to many more sweaty crowds in the decade to come.
40. Say Anything - ...Is a Real Boy
39. Dream Theater - Train of Thought
After years of serving as the sole representatives of the "progressive metal" genre tag, New York's Dream Theater decided to give the latter word its due. The band's heavier songs were garnering favorable receptions at live shows, and following the dynamic highs and lows of their 45-minute epic "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" from the album of the same name, they simply needed to crank up the distortion and shred. Yet the resulting Train of Thought is hardly mindless. If anything, it's the smartest metal album of the age, a seamless combination of the band's progressive tendencies with the blistering speed and mind-blowing heaviness of the groups that influenced the record. Like any Dream Theater album, Train of Thought is excessive in all the right places. There's no inhibition when it comes to lengthening a song by five minutes via an interplaying keyboard and guitar jam session, each individual solo faster and more technical than the last. Axeman John Petrucci's finest work is on display here, his ability to create riffs of epic proportions: dirty, sludgy, grimy, and yet, accessible. The themes here are darker, to fit with the overall tone of the album, and reflect solitude, steadfastness in the face of forcible attempts at change, and in the closer "In the Name of God," blind religious devotion. Train of Thought is what Metallica wishes St. Anger would have been, an unabashedly metal album, but with an IQ, an intelligence at the helm running the show, making every note, every song structure, every bent guitar string mean something heretofore unseen and unheard of.
- Robert Rich
"As I Am"
38. Lil Wayne - Da Drought 3
It's difficult to appreciate it now, but not so long ago Lil Wayne used to be nothing all that special. The child rapper that came up with the ubiquitous Cash Money clique of the late '90s and early 2000s wasn't the least likely candidate to become one of the preeminent rap stars by the close of the decade, but he was close. Da Drought 3 was a giant step from here to there. After turning heads with a markedly new and improved flow on the club banger "Go DJ," and broadening his musical instincts on The Carter II, the DJ-less free mixtape that followed was when the wheels came off. On 29 tracks spanning two discs, the New Orleans native devoured radio beats and a variety of other samples with such lyrical ferocity that the whole music industry took notice. Wayne declared himself to be from Mars, ruminated on the drowning of his earthly home and strung together ear-grabbing metaphors and witticisms at a rate of consciousness that among normal people would produce only gibberish. Reviewed by a number of influential big media outlets, Da Drought 3 was not only a turning point for Lil Wayne, but for the entire medium. Wanna be "the best rapper alive?" Step your mixtape game up.
37. Madvillain - Madvillainy
Tasting menus are where it's at when it comes to fine dining. They allow you to sample everything and realize that all the food is brought together by unrelenting creativity, a solid vision, and lack of compromise. Madvillain, the collaboration of MF Doom and Madlib, plays out like a very good tasting menu. The 22 cuts are short and no two sound alike, but they are unified by Doom's smart eschewing of chorus and Madlib's deep, DEEP crate-digging abilities. Hip-hop for purists. Delicious like "two apple pies and a small fry."
- Andy O'Connor
"Money Folder"
36. Broken Social Scene - You Forgot it In People
When the first notes of "KC Accidental" strike, after two minutes of ambient build-up, it's an epiphany. Subtle guitar chords hint at what's coming, and then the drums come down in a full-out sprint. The rest is in the music.
For those unfamiliar with the set-up, Broken Social Scene is a Canadian indie rock collective (one of many), with anywhere between 7 to over a dozen members at any given time. On record, they have more than 15 musicians working in masterful, orchestral fashion as if vying for three extra days of Christmas.
It's a miracle You Forgot It In People doesn't sound like an all-out clusterfuck. Each member has a distinct voice (almost everyone is involved in another Canadian indie rock troupe i.e. Stars, Do Make Say Think, Feist), yet they are able to make the sum equal more than its parts. No one saw it coming, but BSS harnessed this power to leave an exceptional record that still feels loose and flexible.
Eight years after its original release, it plays like a classic. A throwback album you listen to straight through, with your best pair of headphones. You don't want to miss out on its intricacies.
- John Meller
"Stars and Sons"
35. Queens of the Stone Age - Songs For the Deaf
To write a technical review of Queens of the Stone Age's third album Songs for the Deaf, one full of flowery language, metaphor and excess, would undoubtedly piss Josh Homme off. Queens of the Stone Age is real rock 'n roll, the kind of filthy, foot-stomping dirt the genre was built on. There are no boy band harmonies here, no gentle, soothing lullabies that have crept into rock records as of late (suck it, Kings of Leon). What you get is heavy, manly rock music, whereby Homme fingers the shit out of his guitar and Dave Grohl beats a drumkit within an inch of its artificial life, all while a cloud of cigarette smoke and a river of booze circulates. Songs for the Deaf is at once every rock cliché and none of them. Not something to overthink, there are no underlying concepts to discover, just an album full of what you'd play if someone asked for a concise definition of rock. The title is fitting in so many ways, the least of which not being that the band plays so loud and so heavy that it sounds like they're literally attempting to play something capable of being heard by a deaf person. Homme's droning, Southern drawl weaves in and out of the riffs his hands create, complementing and clashing in all the wrong places. But, that's what is supposed to be happening. It's rock, it's supposed to be wrong. It's supposed to invoke feelings of pure, unadulterated recklessness, a vision of everything one should do to be a morally upstanding person, at once shattered by a vision of the opposite, the dirty, the unlawful, the nasty. Despite what P.O.D. tried to prove, rock can't be good. It's gotta be bad, and QOTSA proudly carries the banner of the wrong.
- Robert Rich
"Go With the Flow"
34. The Thermals - The Body, The Blood, The Machine
The Bush administration perpetrated many, many crimes against the American people, and the most serious of them are widely cataloged in the annals of history and the news media. But if you're looking for one more thing to pin on them -- and, really, aren't we all? -- you can easily blame them for partial responsibility for some of the decade's worst, most heavy-handed music.
Most musicians possess something of a liberal temperament, so the eight-year clusterfuck that was the Bush administration prompted several of them to record protest albums, theoretically meaningful statements that could help turn the tide of public opinion.
In practice, most of these sucked, from Green Day's insufferable American Idiot to Steve Earle's completely unforgivable The Revolution Starts Now. Among the few to defy the paradigm were Portland punk rock trio the Thermals, with the ambitious, surprisingly successful concept album The Body, The Blood, The Machine. Charting one couple's travels through a fascist theocracy that had absolutely no basis in contemporary events, at all, the album blended biblical references and political commentary without ever forgetting how to rock. Hutch Harris and Kathy Foster shed their lo-fi roots for glossy, radio-friendly production that made the album as fun to listen to as it was to dissect. "I Hold The Sound" is probably the catchiest song ever recorded about the crucifixion.
- Patrick Caldwell
"Here's Your Future"
33. Neko Case - Blacklisted
We expect music to do a lot to us and for us. We expect it to make us dance, we expect it to make us mosh, we expect it to plumb the deepest recesses of love and loss and politics and religion, and we expect it to provide an excellent soundtrack for lovemaking. But we don't often expect it to creep the fucking hell out of us, to instill that lingering dread and sense of unease that you get from a well-crafted horror film or an Edgar Allan Poe short story.
That quiet sense of horror may be the best thing about country noir chanteuse Neko Case's Blacklisted, and almost certainly its most unappreciated. Plenty of ink and pixels have been devoted to Case's rich, ethereal voice and her mannered songwriting. But what really makes Blacklisted sing is its unwavering darkness, from the spare keys on "Look For Me (I'll Be Around)" to the staccato, apocalyptic rhythms of the title track. Then there's "Deep Red Bells," loaded with Case's memories of what it was like to be young, female and vulnerable as the Green River Killer roamed the streets of the Pacific Northwest in the '80s and '90s. From the first to the last note, Case instills Blacklisted with a palpable sense of foreboding menace that makes it a pleasantly unsettling voyage -- like all the best scary stories.
- Patrick Caldwell
"Deep Red Bells"
Kanye's triumvirate of higher-learning themed LPs is one of the greatest achievements in the history of the genre. The evolution of Kanye West was the biggest movement in rap.
It was amazing to witness firsthand as a single person redefined pop music.
The Kanye West of Graduation is singularity for potential and talent. Of course the production is top-flight, the real treat is the growth of Kanye as a lyricist. The personal odes to family that populated his first two records are still here ("Champion" and "Big Brother"), but more frequently Kanye applies that introspection to tackle larger ideas ("Homecoming," "The Glory," "Everything I Am"). It was a transcendent moment.
Lyrically, Kanye continued to improve. He went bar for bar with Weezy, and for the most part he took the Illmatic and Black Album route with minimal guest appearances. It was a bold move for someone who was always seen as a better producer than writer. There are some lapses into bad habits, but for the most part Kanye's lyrics matched his unparalleled production. I'd say "Homecoming" and "Champion" are the most delicious examples of West's improved word-smithing and the fact we can debate this for hours is a testament to the LP's strength.
Graduation doesn't have the iconic, larger than life singles that his previous works boasted ("Gold Digger" and "Jesus Walks"), but is full of songs that require instant rewinds. Even now, I have to start the album on track 2 because I can't get through "Good Morning" without having to run it back multiple times. The fact we can debate the exclusion of skits for hours is also important, probably.
Also album would've ranked higher if "Drunk and Hot Girls" had been cut from the tracklist and replaced with the Jeezy-enhanced remix of "Can't Tell Me Nothin."
- Eddie Strait
"Flashing Lights"
31. Daft Punk - Discovery
It took the remainder of this decade for the impact of it to sink in, but Discovery was its quintessential dance album.
The superficial evidence is immense: their sampled robotic vocals propel Kanye's "Stronger," an obvious name check in LCD Soundsystem's "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House," that Youtube video of girls dancing to "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," with 11 million hits. 1998's Homework paved the way by returning to dance music basics: 4/4 beats, funky bassline, catchy synthlines, all stitched together with impeccable production. Discovery built upon the formula, trading simple house funkiness for a simple but epic sound, expanding their songs with originally composed melodies and vocal contributions. It was a huge departure from the over-ambitious breakbeats and string pads of big beat and trance respectively; the embrace of arguably kitsch disco and synthpop samples only cleared the way for movements like electroclash, the blueprint for the heavily compressed and filtered electro-house of Justice and MSTRKRFT. If anything, it re-established the notion that good dance music just needs to be fun and simple: the lyrics may be meaningless, but the amount it moves people isn't.
The songs of Discovery have proven to be so timeless that in the wake of their re-working in Daft Punk's Alive 2007 live album, one critic actually re-evaluated his dismissal of Daft Punk's far less acclaimed 2005 effort Human After All, finding the mixing of tracks from Discovery with new material made the latter more meaningful. After all, this is the album that was so utterly effective it provided the sole basis and inspiration for a full-length anime film. Discovery has proved to be the cornerstone of dance music this decade. And if not, it was a least the origin of the auto-tune revival.
- Josh Bradshaw
"Digital Love"
29. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
Confession time: who really cares about the lyrics in Daft Punk songs? MGMT songs? Justice songs? No doubt someone out there is spending their afternoons deconstructing the greater meaning of Crystal Castles lyrics, but when it comes to dance music, wordplay generally plays second fiddle to beats. Not so for James Murphy, who on Sound of Silver mixes grooves as infectious as the finest dance rockers with a sardonic, thoughtful songwriting sensibility.
Whether on the sharp satire of "North American Scum," the resonant ruminations on aging of "All My Friends" or the sweetly hyperlocal "New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down," Murphy combines a DJ's sense for hooks with a poet's keen insight. The result is the rare record that's equal parts addictive party material and surprisingly poignant commentary on life. At long last, there's an album for the intellectual who dances as well as she debates.
- Patrick Caldwell
"All My Friends"
28. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones
Fever to Tell is the live album. The bar-room power and the bold, fuzzy guitar and really good garage punk that lasts because it's a) refreshing, b) impossible to not consume with visions of electric, towering singer Karen O shutting down stages, c) concurrent with the band's legacy as one of the best live acts. The follow-up wins on songwriting, personal growth, warmer memories: "a testament to waiting until you're good and ready."
Acoustic ballads descend into thunder, there's sirens and keyboards, studio plug-ins. Originally conceived as a concept record about Karen O's cat, the pressure and build almost broke up the three-piece outfit yet their ensuing Show Your Bones is graceful, perfect.
- Ramon Ramirez
"Gold Lion"
27. Eminem - The Eminem Show
The title of Eminem's 2002 LP is all too fitting. Gone is the diabolical, offensive and utterly insane alter ego Slim Shady, and so too is the vulnerable, reflective Marshall Mathers. What appears instead is a mash-up of the two, an amalgamation of Shady and Mathers' best and worst parts, resulting in the most thrilling persona of all, Eminem. To call the album "The Eminem Show" is to tell the world that, for the thousandth time, "Slizzle does not give a fuck." Everything is on display, transgressions and triumphs, blowjobs and gunblasts. The themes echo familiarity - a white trash mom, a doomed relationship with Kim the ex, a love for Hailie the daughter - but this time around, they're handled in grandiose fashion. The sparse, minimalistic beats of Em's first two albums are discarded in favor of bass-heavy, multi-layered compositions complete with distorted electric guitars, organs and just enough fluttering piano melodies to send everything into the land of the absurd. This is Eminem's carnival, his circus freak show, his confession to the public that fell in love with him and placed him squarely outside of Detroit's 8 Mile Road and into the music industry spotlight. Mentor Dr. Dre appears on a couple of tracks as per usual, as does Obie Trice, but the album is not about them. This is Eminem at his most controversial yet sincere, most slickly produced yet raw. It's an album of contradictions, two unlike items colliding together in a shower of sparks and color. It looks ridiculous, it sounds absurd, but it's utterly jaw-dropping. It's The Eminem Show.
- Robert Rich
"White America"
26. Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise
Illinoise is the kind of album that you rediscover underneath your car seat one day and end up playing over and over and over again for no particular reason. It's impossible to wrap your arms around the hugeness of ambition, talent and vision held within these embarrassingly rich folk-pop and instrumental gems. Sufjan is the kind of guy who was president of student council and the accelerated reading club. There's a pretty, Sunday-school quality to his songwriting and a capital "F" Faith that drives the use of his talents toward grand, majestic projects. Illinois and its predecessor Michigan (part of a half-jokingly promised "50 state series") are sweeping, arresting statements rooted in Americana and operatic narrative structure. Even if we never get another state album, the road trip so far has been such sweet sightseeing. "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!" is a personal favorite, but if you don't get caught up in "Chicago," I don't know what to say to you.
25. M.I.A. - Kala
Call it revenge. Revenge on the people who ignored the low-tech but fabulous Arular, M.I.A.'s first album, revenge on the Americans who refused her a visa on the basis of Sri Lankan family ties and revenge on the idea that pop music should be stupid. Originially planning to work with big-time but ultimately yawn-inducing producers in the United States, Maya Arulpragasm failed to get a visa and instead went around the world, reworking traditional sounds from the third world massive over and over in each destination, with Switch and Diplo sprinkling a little production crack on top. It's just an album that nobody could have expected, M.I.A. herself did not expect and is memorable because it's a genuine article of experience. However, all of this colorful world-music stuff can't overtake the power of M.I.A. herself, whose lyrics and delivery spawned several seasons of critical comparison. For a time the first step in a flow chart to describe a new album from a female solo artist was "Is she similar to M.I.A.?" Off this album you had "Paper Planes" (DJs, please, let it RIP as the #1 overplayed song of the decade) but you also got "Mango Pickle," the ultimately more fun single, "Jimmy," and my personal favorite, "Hussel."
24. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
Silent Alarm is a rocket ship. It's a ballsy, break-neck debut with emotional honesty and a pulse you can dance to. It's youthful optimism teetering on the precipice of worldly despair. It's Chris Mathews getting a thrill up his leg during an Obama speech. It's four UK 20 year-olds hawking a self-made demo that would eventually be in competition with Radiohead and U2. It's a lifesaver. It's an ambitious romance. It's your first day of school. It's a letter you wrote to yourself from a different time. The hopes and fears of a generation encapsulated.
22. D'Angelo - Voodoo
The stories post-Voodoo are depressing: the eccentric soul genius is overweight, debilitated by image issues; he's wasted millions on studio sessions where he shows up without vigor and plays video games for hours on the clock; discarded half-songs have been bended into alright choruses on 2007 rap albums. D'Angelo has kept us waiting for ten years and we've arrived at that Fugees, Detox, level where whatever comes next will ultimately not matter.
Mystique enhances critical weight, always, but Voodoo matches. When McDonald's realized it could no longer market to suburbia, it served as the basis for all those jazz lounge commercials. It was a scene and a moment, in other words. Brown men at 70-degree clubs in leather jackets. Write it off as neo-soul at your own peril, this is the Soulquarian masterpiece.
D'Angelo borrowed influence and talent from the aforementioned collective (The Roots, Badu, rappers like Mos Def, producers like J Dilla, Cody Chesnutt), compartmentalized musicianship into a fatherhood-reflecting, spiritually searching, lovemaking epic.
"Left and Right" is the partystarter. "Untitled (How Does it Feel)" is the moment we realized this gene had a pulse and stands as the premier r&b song of the decade despite its intimate, iconic, controversial and headline-heisting video. Yes, it ends abruptly and mid-hook, that wasn't just the version you downloaded. "Chicken Grease" is for Richmond. "Send it On" was the first one written. "Devil's Pie" is voodoo.
- Ramon Ramirez
"Left and Right"
21. Paul Wall & Chamillionaire - Get Ya Mind Correct
Resentment as a weapon, Say Anything's middle-fingered major-label first attacked its wave of "prototypical nonconformists, vacuous soldiers of the thrift store gestapo." The classmates of a 20 year-old guitar prodigy's semester in New York. Creative, phony types solely about the kicks.
Like many, Max Bemix wasn't moved by exercises in lo-fi soundscapes, he liked Saves the Day and Mineral and Recover. He liked resonating, emotional punk, destested his hometown, questioned his Jewish faith, a girl named Molly Connolly broke up with him over the revealing nature of his songs.
...Is a Real Boy is angst, too much information, an incredible batch of songs, powerfully romantic but equally gruff, without uttering anything more mushy than "you're what keeps me believing the world's not gone dead." The transmissions are honest accounts ("I'm searching for drugs in a southern town") and transcribed encounters ("she said, 'I can't get laid in this town without these pointy-fucking-shoes, my feet are so black and blue'") and rollicking brawls ("what say you and all your friends meet all of my friends in the alley tonight?").
- Ramon Ramirez
"Alive With the Glory of Love"
Like many, Max Bemix wasn't moved by exercises in lo-fi soundscapes, he liked Saves the Day and Mineral and Recover. He liked resonating, emotional punk, destested his hometown, questioned his Jewish faith, a girl named Molly Connolly broke up with him over the revealing nature of his songs.
...Is a Real Boy is angst, too much information, an incredible batch of songs, powerfully romantic but equally gruff, without uttering anything more mushy than "you're what keeps me believing the world's not gone dead." The transmissions are honest accounts ("I'm searching for drugs in a southern town") and transcribed encounters ("she said, 'I can't get laid in this town without these pointy-fucking-shoes, my feet are so black and blue'") and rollicking brawls ("what say you and all your friends meet all of my friends in the alley tonight?").
- Ramon Ramirez
"Alive With the Glory of Love"
39. Dream Theater - Train of Thought
After years of serving as the sole representatives of the "progressive metal" genre tag, New York's Dream Theater decided to give the latter word its due. The band's heavier songs were garnering favorable receptions at live shows, and following the dynamic highs and lows of their 45-minute epic "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" from the album of the same name, they simply needed to crank up the distortion and shred. Yet the resulting Train of Thought is hardly mindless. If anything, it's the smartest metal album of the age, a seamless combination of the band's progressive tendencies with the blistering speed and mind-blowing heaviness of the groups that influenced the record. Like any Dream Theater album, Train of Thought is excessive in all the right places. There's no inhibition when it comes to lengthening a song by five minutes via an interplaying keyboard and guitar jam session, each individual solo faster and more technical than the last. Axeman John Petrucci's finest work is on display here, his ability to create riffs of epic proportions: dirty, sludgy, grimy, and yet, accessible. The themes here are darker, to fit with the overall tone of the album, and reflect solitude, steadfastness in the face of forcible attempts at change, and in the closer "In the Name of God," blind religious devotion. Train of Thought is what Metallica wishes St. Anger would have been, an unabashedly metal album, but with an IQ, an intelligence at the helm running the show, making every note, every song structure, every bent guitar string mean something heretofore unseen and unheard of.
- Robert Rich
"As I Am"
38. Lil Wayne - Da Drought 3
It's difficult to appreciate it now, but not so long ago Lil Wayne used to be nothing all that special. The child rapper that came up with the ubiquitous Cash Money clique of the late '90s and early 2000s wasn't the least likely candidate to become one of the preeminent rap stars by the close of the decade, but he was close. Da Drought 3 was a giant step from here to there. After turning heads with a markedly new and improved flow on the club banger "Go DJ," and broadening his musical instincts on The Carter II, the DJ-less free mixtape that followed was when the wheels came off. On 29 tracks spanning two discs, the New Orleans native devoured radio beats and a variety of other samples with such lyrical ferocity that the whole music industry took notice. Wayne declared himself to be from Mars, ruminated on the drowning of his earthly home and strung together ear-grabbing metaphors and witticisms at a rate of consciousness that among normal people would produce only gibberish. Reviewed by a number of influential big media outlets, Da Drought 3 was not only a turning point for Lil Wayne, but for the entire medium. Wanna be "the best rapper alive?" Step your mixtape game up.
- Reggie Ugwu
"I Can't Feel My Face"
Tasting menus are where it's at when it comes to fine dining. They allow you to sample everything and realize that all the food is brought together by unrelenting creativity, a solid vision, and lack of compromise. Madvillain, the collaboration of MF Doom and Madlib, plays out like a very good tasting menu. The 22 cuts are short and no two sound alike, but they are unified by Doom's smart eschewing of chorus and Madlib's deep, DEEP crate-digging abilities. Hip-hop for purists. Delicious like "two apple pies and a small fry."
- Andy O'Connor
"Money Folder"
When the first notes of "KC Accidental" strike, after two minutes of ambient build-up, it's an epiphany. Subtle guitar chords hint at what's coming, and then the drums come down in a full-out sprint. The rest is in the music.
For those unfamiliar with the set-up, Broken Social Scene is a Canadian indie rock collective (one of many), with anywhere between 7 to over a dozen members at any given time. On record, they have more than 15 musicians working in masterful, orchestral fashion as if vying for three extra days of Christmas.
It's a miracle You Forgot It In People doesn't sound like an all-out clusterfuck. Each member has a distinct voice (almost everyone is involved in another Canadian indie rock troupe i.e. Stars, Do Make Say Think, Feist), yet they are able to make the sum equal more than its parts. No one saw it coming, but BSS harnessed this power to leave an exceptional record that still feels loose and flexible.
Eight years after its original release, it plays like a classic. A throwback album you listen to straight through, with your best pair of headphones. You don't want to miss out on its intricacies.
- John Meller
"Stars and Sons"
To write a technical review of Queens of the Stone Age's third album Songs for the Deaf, one full of flowery language, metaphor and excess, would undoubtedly piss Josh Homme off. Queens of the Stone Age is real rock 'n roll, the kind of filthy, foot-stomping dirt the genre was built on. There are no boy band harmonies here, no gentle, soothing lullabies that have crept into rock records as of late (suck it, Kings of Leon). What you get is heavy, manly rock music, whereby Homme fingers the shit out of his guitar and Dave Grohl beats a drumkit within an inch of its artificial life, all while a cloud of cigarette smoke and a river of booze circulates. Songs for the Deaf is at once every rock cliché and none of them. Not something to overthink, there are no underlying concepts to discover, just an album full of what you'd play if someone asked for a concise definition of rock. The title is fitting in so many ways, the least of which not being that the band plays so loud and so heavy that it sounds like they're literally attempting to play something capable of being heard by a deaf person. Homme's droning, Southern drawl weaves in and out of the riffs his hands create, complementing and clashing in all the wrong places. But, that's what is supposed to be happening. It's rock, it's supposed to be wrong. It's supposed to invoke feelings of pure, unadulterated recklessness, a vision of everything one should do to be a morally upstanding person, at once shattered by a vision of the opposite, the dirty, the unlawful, the nasty. Despite what P.O.D. tried to prove, rock can't be good. It's gotta be bad, and QOTSA proudly carries the banner of the wrong.
- Robert Rich
"Go With the Flow"
The Bush administration perpetrated many, many crimes against the American people, and the most serious of them are widely cataloged in the annals of history and the news media. But if you're looking for one more thing to pin on them -- and, really, aren't we all? -- you can easily blame them for partial responsibility for some of the decade's worst, most heavy-handed music.
Most musicians possess something of a liberal temperament, so the eight-year clusterfuck that was the Bush administration prompted several of them to record protest albums, theoretically meaningful statements that could help turn the tide of public opinion.
In practice, most of these sucked, from Green Day's insufferable American Idiot to Steve Earle's completely unforgivable The Revolution Starts Now. Among the few to defy the paradigm were Portland punk rock trio the Thermals, with the ambitious, surprisingly successful concept album The Body, The Blood, The Machine. Charting one couple's travels through a fascist theocracy that had absolutely no basis in contemporary events, at all, the album blended biblical references and political commentary without ever forgetting how to rock. Hutch Harris and Kathy Foster shed their lo-fi roots for glossy, radio-friendly production that made the album as fun to listen to as it was to dissect. "I Hold The Sound" is probably the catchiest song ever recorded about the crucifixion.
- Patrick Caldwell
"Here's Your Future"
We expect music to do a lot to us and for us. We expect it to make us dance, we expect it to make us mosh, we expect it to plumb the deepest recesses of love and loss and politics and religion, and we expect it to provide an excellent soundtrack for lovemaking. But we don't often expect it to creep the fucking hell out of us, to instill that lingering dread and sense of unease that you get from a well-crafted horror film or an Edgar Allan Poe short story.
That quiet sense of horror may be the best thing about country noir chanteuse Neko Case's Blacklisted, and almost certainly its most unappreciated. Plenty of ink and pixels have been devoted to Case's rich, ethereal voice and her mannered songwriting. But what really makes Blacklisted sing is its unwavering darkness, from the spare keys on "Look For Me (I'll Be Around)" to the staccato, apocalyptic rhythms of the title track. Then there's "Deep Red Bells," loaded with Case's memories of what it was like to be young, female and vulnerable as the Green River Killer roamed the streets of the Pacific Northwest in the '80s and '90s. From the first to the last note, Case instills Blacklisted with a palpable sense of foreboding menace that makes it a pleasantly unsettling voyage -- like all the best scary stories.
- Patrick Caldwell
"Deep Red Bells"
Kanye's triumvirate of higher-learning themed LPs is one of the greatest achievements in the history of the genre. The evolution of Kanye West was the biggest movement in rap.
It was amazing to witness firsthand as a single person redefined pop music.
The Kanye West of Graduation is singularity for potential and talent. Of course the production is top-flight, the real treat is the growth of Kanye as a lyricist. The personal odes to family that populated his first two records are still here ("Champion" and "Big Brother"), but more frequently Kanye applies that introspection to tackle larger ideas ("Homecoming," "The Glory," "Everything I Am"). It was a transcendent moment.
Lyrically, Kanye continued to improve. He went bar for bar with Weezy, and for the most part he took the Illmatic and Black Album route with minimal guest appearances. It was a bold move for someone who was always seen as a better producer than writer. There are some lapses into bad habits, but for the most part Kanye's lyrics matched his unparalleled production. I'd say "Homecoming" and "Champion" are the most delicious examples of West's improved word-smithing and the fact we can debate this for hours is a testament to the LP's strength.
Graduation doesn't have the iconic, larger than life singles that his previous works boasted ("Gold Digger" and "Jesus Walks"), but is full of songs that require instant rewinds. Even now, I have to start the album on track 2 because I can't get through "Good Morning" without having to run it back multiple times. The fact we can debate the exclusion of skits for hours is also important, probably.
Also album would've ranked higher if "Drunk and Hot Girls" had been cut from the tracklist and replaced with the Jeezy-enhanced remix of "Can't Tell Me Nothin."
- Eddie Strait
"Flashing Lights"
31. Daft Punk - Discovery
It took the remainder of this decade for the impact of it to sink in, but Discovery was its quintessential dance album.
The superficial evidence is immense: their sampled robotic vocals propel Kanye's "Stronger," an obvious name check in LCD Soundsystem's "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House," that Youtube video of girls dancing to "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," with 11 million hits. 1998's Homework paved the way by returning to dance music basics: 4/4 beats, funky bassline, catchy synthlines, all stitched together with impeccable production. Discovery built upon the formula, trading simple house funkiness for a simple but epic sound, expanding their songs with originally composed melodies and vocal contributions. It was a huge departure from the over-ambitious breakbeats and string pads of big beat and trance respectively; the embrace of arguably kitsch disco and synthpop samples only cleared the way for movements like electroclash, the blueprint for the heavily compressed and filtered electro-house of Justice and MSTRKRFT. If anything, it re-established the notion that good dance music just needs to be fun and simple: the lyrics may be meaningless, but the amount it moves people isn't.
The songs of Discovery have proven to be so timeless that in the wake of their re-working in Daft Punk's Alive 2007 live album, one critic actually re-evaluated his dismissal of Daft Punk's far less acclaimed 2005 effort Human After All, finding the mixing of tracks from Discovery with new material made the latter more meaningful. After all, this is the album that was so utterly effective it provided the sole basis and inspiration for a full-length anime film. Discovery has proved to be the cornerstone of dance music this decade. And if not, it was a least the origin of the auto-tune revival.
- Josh Bradshaw
"Digital Love"
There's nothing worse than hearing cheery music at a time when you feel like shit. Songs aren't necessarily very good at changing your mood, but if timed appropriately, they can be excellent at enhancing it. Beck's 8th studio album is a roadmap for the melancholy. From the opening chords of "The Golden Age," Sea Change is a perfectly calibrated playlist of songs that haunt with their beauty and stimulate the memory centers with world-weary lovelorn meditations. It doesn't sound like anything Beck has made before or since, and represents the most fruitful of collaborations with his kindred spirit and Radiohead producer, Nigel Godrich. From an artist famously meandering and mercurial, Sea Change was a low-tempo high-water mark.
- Reggie Ugwu
"Lost Cause"
Confession time: who really cares about the lyrics in Daft Punk songs? MGMT songs? Justice songs? No doubt someone out there is spending their afternoons deconstructing the greater meaning of Crystal Castles lyrics, but when it comes to dance music, wordplay generally plays second fiddle to beats. Not so for James Murphy, who on Sound of Silver mixes grooves as infectious as the finest dance rockers with a sardonic, thoughtful songwriting sensibility.
Whether on the sharp satire of "North American Scum," the resonant ruminations on aging of "All My Friends" or the sweetly hyperlocal "New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down," Murphy combines a DJ's sense for hooks with a poet's keen insight. The result is the rare record that's equal parts addictive party material and surprisingly poignant commentary on life. At long last, there's an album for the intellectual who dances as well as she debates.
- Patrick Caldwell
"All My Friends"
Fever to Tell is the live album. The bar-room power and the bold, fuzzy guitar and really good garage punk that lasts because it's a) refreshing, b) impossible to not consume with visions of electric, towering singer Karen O shutting down stages, c) concurrent with the band's legacy as one of the best live acts. The follow-up wins on songwriting, personal growth, warmer memories: "a testament to waiting until you're good and ready."
Acoustic ballads descend into thunder, there's sirens and keyboards, studio plug-ins. Originally conceived as a concept record about Karen O's cat, the pressure and build almost broke up the three-piece outfit yet their ensuing Show Your Bones is graceful, perfect.
- Ramon Ramirez
"Gold Lion"
The title of Eminem's 2002 LP is all too fitting. Gone is the diabolical, offensive and utterly insane alter ego Slim Shady, and so too is the vulnerable, reflective Marshall Mathers. What appears instead is a mash-up of the two, an amalgamation of Shady and Mathers' best and worst parts, resulting in the most thrilling persona of all, Eminem. To call the album "The Eminem Show" is to tell the world that, for the thousandth time, "Slizzle does not give a fuck." Everything is on display, transgressions and triumphs, blowjobs and gunblasts. The themes echo familiarity - a white trash mom, a doomed relationship with Kim the ex, a love for Hailie the daughter - but this time around, they're handled in grandiose fashion. The sparse, minimalistic beats of Em's first two albums are discarded in favor of bass-heavy, multi-layered compositions complete with distorted electric guitars, organs and just enough fluttering piano melodies to send everything into the land of the absurd. This is Eminem's carnival, his circus freak show, his confession to the public that fell in love with him and placed him squarely outside of Detroit's 8 Mile Road and into the music industry spotlight. Mentor Dr. Dre appears on a couple of tracks as per usual, as does Obie Trice, but the album is not about them. This is Eminem at his most controversial yet sincere, most slickly produced yet raw. It's an album of contradictions, two unlike items colliding together in a shower of sparks and color. It looks ridiculous, it sounds absurd, but it's utterly jaw-dropping. It's The Eminem Show.
- Robert Rich
"White America"
Illinoise is the kind of album that you rediscover underneath your car seat one day and end up playing over and over and over again for no particular reason. It's impossible to wrap your arms around the hugeness of ambition, talent and vision held within these embarrassingly rich folk-pop and instrumental gems. Sufjan is the kind of guy who was president of student council and the accelerated reading club. There's a pretty, Sunday-school quality to his songwriting and a capital "F" Faith that drives the use of his talents toward grand, majestic projects. Illinois and its predecessor Michigan (part of a half-jokingly promised "50 state series") are sweeping, arresting statements rooted in Americana and operatic narrative structure. Even if we never get another state album, the road trip so far has been such sweet sightseeing. "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!" is a personal favorite, but if you don't get caught up in "Chicago," I don't know what to say to you.
- Reggie Ugwu
"Chicago"
Call it revenge. Revenge on the people who ignored the low-tech but fabulous Arular, M.I.A.'s first album, revenge on the Americans who refused her a visa on the basis of Sri Lankan family ties and revenge on the idea that pop music should be stupid. Originially planning to work with big-time but ultimately yawn-inducing producers in the United States, Maya Arulpragasm failed to get a visa and instead went around the world, reworking traditional sounds from the third world massive over and over in each destination, with Switch and Diplo sprinkling a little production crack on top. It's just an album that nobody could have expected, M.I.A. herself did not expect and is memorable because it's a genuine article of experience. However, all of this colorful world-music stuff can't overtake the power of M.I.A. herself, whose lyrics and delivery spawned several seasons of critical comparison. For a time the first step in a flow chart to describe a new album from a female solo artist was "Is she similar to M.I.A.?" Off this album you had "Paper Planes" (DJs, please, let it RIP as the #1 overplayed song of the decade) but you also got "Mango Pickle," the ultimately more fun single, "Jimmy," and my personal favorite, "Hussel."
- Natalia Ciolko
"20 Dollar"
Silent Alarm is a rocket ship. It's a ballsy, break-neck debut with emotional honesty and a pulse you can dance to. It's youthful optimism teetering on the precipice of worldly despair. It's Chris Mathews getting a thrill up his leg during an Obama speech. It's four UK 20 year-olds hawking a self-made demo that would eventually be in competition with Radiohead and U2. It's a lifesaver. It's an ambitious romance. It's your first day of school. It's a letter you wrote to yourself from a different time. The hopes and fears of a generation encapsulated.
- Reggie Ugwu
The Cool galvanized people. The people around me were actually talking about an album, not a single from a blog or a radio smash but an entire artistic album. Bless your heart Lupe for coming up with a concept and staying dedicated to it throughout the effort, but still being able to get loose at the right moments - even shouting out the blog address of your #1 fans at the end. And with Lupe it always feels like fighting the good fight. It gets hard not to put him on a pedestal for his moral rectitude and verbal wrecktitude because he's just that good, both ways. Lupe's first proper studio album, Food & Liquor, leaked like crazy and reached people at various moments, but The Cool seemed to hit everyone at once, creating this tsunami of enthusiasm. It's hard to sum up this album except to say that you can just throw it on, and listen to every track, possibly over and over for weeks at a time.
- Natalia Ciolko
"Intruder Alert"
The stories post-Voodoo are depressing: the eccentric soul genius is overweight, debilitated by image issues; he's wasted millions on studio sessions where he shows up without vigor and plays video games for hours on the clock; discarded half-songs have been bended into alright choruses on 2007 rap albums. D'Angelo has kept us waiting for ten years and we've arrived at that Fugees, Detox, level where whatever comes next will ultimately not matter.
Mystique enhances critical weight, always, but Voodoo matches. When McDonald's realized it could no longer market to suburbia, it served as the basis for all those jazz lounge commercials. It was a scene and a moment, in other words. Brown men at 70-degree clubs in leather jackets. Write it off as neo-soul at your own peril, this is the Soulquarian masterpiece.
D'Angelo borrowed influence and talent from the aforementioned collective (The Roots, Badu, rappers like Mos Def, producers like J Dilla, Cody Chesnutt), compartmentalized musicianship into a fatherhood-reflecting, spiritually searching, lovemaking epic.
"Left and Right" is the partystarter. "Untitled (How Does it Feel)" is the moment we realized this gene had a pulse and stands as the premier r&b song of the decade despite its intimate, iconic, controversial and headline-heisting video. Yes, it ends abruptly and mid-hook, that wasn't just the version you downloaded. "Chicken Grease" is for Richmond. "Send it On" was the first one written. "Devil's Pie" is voodoo.
- Ramon Ramirez
"Left and Right"
The reason Houston blew up.
Def Jam and the like had been keeping tabs on DJ Screw's disciples since his tragic, inevitable codeine overdose in 2000, but it wasn't until two rising stars from North Houston rival, Swishahouse, made a slang-infused, radio-ready snakecharmer that the internal decision was passed down to farm the city's talent. Pharrell signed Slim Thug. Mike Jones self-referenced all the way to the bank. Lil' Flip, widely considered the best freestyler, was positioned as the star but ultimately stalled out and now releases work on fucking Koch.
"Big Swangers" makes every Nelly song sound small. "Balla Talk II" likens rims to "Jurassic Park." "Go Grind" and classic, no bullshit opener "My Money Gets Jealous" feverishly match love for capitalism with wit: "getting paid is like good sex because my money comes easy," "man, man I'm the man."
Together Paul Wall and Cham were sharp class clowns touting their financial freedom, interrupting each other when one would claim possession of luxury autos that don't yet exist. Ideal chemistry. As the years progressed and petty industry beefs separated the friendship, both would make more money and rise to national prominence. Chamillionaire keeps a sharp tongue but needs to stop singing his own choruses, Paul Wall allowed himself to be presented as a caricature, got too chubby to be a heartthrob.
- Ramon Ramirez
Def Jam and the like had been keeping tabs on DJ Screw's disciples since his tragic, inevitable codeine overdose in 2000, but it wasn't until two rising stars from North Houston rival, Swishahouse, made a slang-infused, radio-ready snakecharmer that the internal decision was passed down to farm the city's talent. Pharrell signed Slim Thug. Mike Jones self-referenced all the way to the bank. Lil' Flip, widely considered the best freestyler, was positioned as the star but ultimately stalled out and now releases work on fucking Koch.
"Big Swangers" makes every Nelly song sound small. "Balla Talk II" likens rims to "Jurassic Park." "Go Grind" and classic, no bullshit opener "My Money Gets Jealous" feverishly match love for capitalism with wit: "getting paid is like good sex because my money comes easy," "man, man I'm the man."
Together Paul Wall and Cham were sharp class clowns touting their financial freedom, interrupting each other when one would claim possession of luxury autos that don't yet exist. Ideal chemistry. As the years progressed and petty industry beefs separated the friendship, both would make more money and rise to national prominence. Chamillionaire keeps a sharp tongue but needs to stop singing his own choruses, Paul Wall allowed himself to be presented as a caricature, got too chubby to be a heartthrob.
- Ramon Ramirez
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