Year-End/Decade-End Lists - The 2000s in Music

[Chato]

145. Broken Social Scene "Cause = Time" Yay!

Stuart Berman did a great job in picturing the spirit of this song.
Will probably at least make the top50 of my decade-end list.

[aTunes]

So with all the rants and raves some of you have went on about, no one has managed to address my major issue with Pitchfork. The fact that they are clearly mainstream biased. They have a set few successful songs they can like, and they don't allow themselves anymore than that. Quality doesn't really matter to them when it comes to a mainstream song. They pick a handful of hits to praise, and throw everything else to the side to make way for their precious album cuts and obscurities. That list is not really a fair unbiased view on the 500 greatest songs of the decade, and that's what makes it an invalid list in my eyes. It really doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I may not agree with their selections, it's that they composed the list with a biased outlook on the music of the decade.

[WotUNeed]

Hmm...

1) I think everyone's addressed your point, actually - it's not that Pitchfork has set a cap on the amount of mainstream music they can include. They just didn't find much they thought merited it.

2) You want an unbiased best of list? Negation in terms much?

[Deleted]

Aug 30, 2009 11:47:12 GMT -5 aTunes said:

So with all the rants and raves some of you have went on about, no one has managed to address my major issue with Pitchfork. The fact that they are clearly mainstream biased. They have a set few successful songs they can like, and they don't allow themselves anymore than that. Quality doesn't really matter to them when it comes to a mainstream song. They pick a handful of hits to praise, and throw everything else to the side to make way for their precious album cuts and obscurities. That list is not really a fair unbiased view on the 500 greatest songs of the decade, and that's what makes it an invalid list in my eyes. It really doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I may not agree with their selections, it's that they composed the list with a biased outlook on the music of the decade.

Your issues have been addressed multiple times by multiple different people.

[aTunes]

Aug 30, 2009 11:54:31 GMT -5 WotUNeed said:

Hmm...

1) I think everyone's addressed your point, actually - it's not that Pitchfork has set a cap on the amount of mainstream music they can include. They just didn't find much they thought merited it.

2) You want an unbiased best of list? Negation in terms much?

All I'm saying is having followed Pitchfork for years, I persoanlly don't see it that way. It seems to me they clearly have a disdain for mainstream in general, and that's why the mainstream songs on that list were very limited, not because they felt there just weren't enough hit songs that merited it. I also do believe that a best of list can be unbiased (not un-opinionated mind you), so I'm not sure how that's a "negation of terms."

[aTunes]

Aug 30, 2009 11:59:09 GMT -5 @backintime said:

Aug 30, 2009 11:47:12 GMT -5 aTunes said:

So with all the rants and raves some of you have went on about, no one has managed to address my major issue with Pitchfork. The fact that they are clearly mainstream biased. They have a set few successful songs they can like, and they don't allow themselves anymore than that. Quality doesn't really matter to them when it comes to a mainstream song. They pick a handful of hits to praise, and throw everything else to the side to make way for their precious album cuts and obscurities. That list is not really a fair unbiased view on the 500 greatest songs of the decade, and that's what makes it an invalid list in my eyes. It really doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I may not agree with their selections, it's that they composed the list with a biased outlook on the music of the decade.

Your issues have been addressed multiple times by multiple different people.

Really? All I've seen is people rambling on and on about how success doesn't equal quality. I'm well aware of that, and that was never my issue.

[Deleted]

Maybe you should take your 'issue' up with Pitchfork if it's bothering you this much. Your problem is that they 'set themselves a few successful songs they can like', and that blatantly isn't true, so i guess there you go, it's solved. That said, clearly Pitchfork isn't the website for you, and maybe you could find some different year-end lists that reinforce your existing tastes rather than challenge them, because complaining on an internet forum isn't going to change anything.

[WotUNeed]

Aug 30, 2009 12:04:11 GMT -5 aTunes said:

I also do believe that a best of list can be unbiased (not un-opinionated mind you), so I'm not sure how that's a "negation of terms."

"It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiased opinion, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is absolutely valueless. ... Art is a passion, and, in matters of art, thought is inevitably coloured by emotion, and so is fluid rather than fixed, and, depending upon fine moods and exquisite moments, cannot be narrowed into the rigidity of a scientific formula or a theological dogma."

[Nevermind]

Aug 30, 2009 12:29:39 GMT -5 WotUNeed said:

Aug 30, 2009 12:04:11 GMT -5 aTunes said:

I also do believe that a best of list can be unbiased (not un-opinionated mind you), so I'm not sure how that's a "negation of terms."

"It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiased opinion, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is absolutely valueless. ... Art is a passion, and, in matters of art, thought is inevitably coloured by emotion, and so is fluid rather than fixed, and, depending upon fine moods and exquisite moments, cannot be narrowed into the rigidity of a scientific formula or a theological dogma."

[/img]

Interestingly I've been reading quite a few opinions on P4K's Year-End List, and the general opinion appears to be from many that there are in fact too many mainstream song on the chart: quite a few particularly find "Since U Been Gone" and "Umbrella" far too high in the Top 30. For the most influential "hipster" publication around, Pitchfork is actually remarkably open to good pop songs.

[aTunes]

Aug 30, 2009 12:29:39 GMT -5 WotUNeed said:

Aug 30, 2009 12:04:11 GMT -5 aTunes said:

I also do believe that a best of list can be unbiased (not un-opinionated mind you), so I'm not sure how that's a "negation of terms."

"It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiased opinion, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is absolutely valueless. ... Art is a passion, and, in matters of art, thought is inevitably coloured by emotion, and so is fluid rather than fixed, and, depending upon fine moods and exquisite moments, cannot be narrowed into the rigidity of a scientific formula or a theological dogma."

Yet any opinion can be just as valuable or invaluable as one wants to make it when you get down to it. So a biased opinion can be just as invaluable as an unbiased one to some. I don't view opinions and biases as intertwined, and therein lies the beauty of it all.

[WotUNeed]

Aug 30, 2009 12:52:42 GMT -5 aTunes said:

Aug 30, 2009 12:29:39 GMT -5 WotUNeed said:

"It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiased opinion, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is absolutely valueless. ... Art is a passion, and, in matters of art, thought is inevitably coloured by emotion, and so is fluid rather than fixed, and, depending upon fine moods and exquisite moments, cannot be narrowed into the rigidity of a scientific formula or a theological dogma."

Yet any opinion can be just as valuable or invaluable as one wants to make it when you get down to it. So a biased opinion can be just as invaluable as an unbiased one to some. I don't view opinions and biases as intertwined, and therein lies the beauty of it all.

I'd say I'm glad you agree that biased opinions are invaluable, but I won't play dense.

Anyway, I was just quoting a passage from Wilde about the role of the critic that makes a pretty good argument about why fairness and criticism don't mesh well, but, yes, to each their own. I just think you'll find that unbiased critical lists are hard to come by, because unbiased critics don't last long on the job.

[Nevermind]

atunes, your whole situation confuses me-- you claim to have followed Pitchfork for years, and say you know a "vast majority" of the Top 500 songs (so maybe approximately above 350?), yet you have only recently come to the realisation that P4K is not geared towards promoting mainstream singles? The kind of person who follows P4K is not the kind who a) even goes to the site expecting to see reviews and promotion of mainstream songs (do you even know why Ryan Schreiber founded the site in the first place?) and b) whose Top 5 of their personal chart would include songs like "Sweet Dreams" and "Battlefield" --surely for someone who knows just so many indie and experimental songs from this decade, and regularly goes to the most famed hipster webzine on the internet would seemingly have a wider and more eclectic music taste than listening to such generic and unoriginal Top 40 Pop?

[busyboy]

Aug 30, 2009 13:03:29 GMT -5 Nevermind said:

P4K is not geared towards promoting mainstream singles

THANK YOU!

[aTunes]

Aug 30, 2009 13:03:29 GMT -5 Nevermind said:

atunes, your whole situation confuses me-- you claim to have followed Pitchfork for years, and say you know a "vast majority" of the Top 500 songs (so maybe approximately above 350?), yet you have only recently come to the realisation that P4K is not geared towards promoting mainstream singles? The kind of person who follows P4K is not the kind who a) even goes to the site expecting to see reviews and promotion of mainstream songs (do you even know why Ryan Schreiber founded the site in the first place?) and b) whose Top 5 of their personal chart would include songs like "Sweet Dreams" and "Battlefield" --surely for someone who knows just so many indie and experimental songs from this decade, and regularly goes to the most famed hipster webzine on the internet would seemingly have a wider and more eclectic music taste than listening to such generic and unoriginal Top 40 Pop?

First off, I've followed Pitchfork because I like music, so I follow several vastly different sites pertaining to music. I'm not an avid fan of the site and never claimed to be, but yes I do check it from time to time. I know they're not geared towards mainstream music. It's also always seemed to me that they have a bias against it, besides just not being geared towards it. They, like you seemingly do, hold it to generally be generic stuff that is beneath them. That's too bad, because anyone who can't realize that mainstream music serves an entirely different purpose as, shall we say "indie" music, is sorely missing out.

So my problem is why is a website so geared towards a certain kind of music doing a greatest 500 songs of the decade? They clearly don't give mainstream music enough of a chance to be qualified to do such a general greatest songs list. They should be doing a 500 greatest indie songs of the decade list, and excluding mainstream stuff altogether. Then I would have no issue with the subject.

As far as my personal chart goes, I come to Pulse primarily to discuss mainstream music, and my personal chart here reflects that. I have other places if I want to discuss the non-mainstream. Pulse though, is very mainstream geared, so that's what I focus on here.

[Nevermind]

Aug 30, 2009 13:24:01 GMT -5 aTunes said:

Aug 30, 2009 13:03:29 GMT -5 Nevermind said:

atunes, your whole situation confuses me-- you claim to have followed Pitchfork for years, and say you know a "vast majority" of the Top 500 songs (so maybe approximately above 350?), yet you have only recently come to the realisation that P4K is not geared towards promoting mainstream singles? The kind of person who follows P4K is not the kind who a) even goes to the site expecting to see reviews and promotion of mainstream songs (do you even know why Ryan Schreiber founded the site in the first place?) and b) whose Top 5 of their personal chart would include songs like "Sweet Dreams" and "Battlefield" --surely for someone who knows just so many indie and experimental songs from this decade, and regularly goes to the most famed hipster webzine on the internet would seemingly have a wider and more eclectic music taste than listening to such generic and unoriginal Top 40 Pop?

So my problem is why is a website so geared towards a certain kind of music doing a greatest 500 songs of the decade? They clearly don't give mainstream music enough of a chance to be qualified to do such a general greatest songs list. They should be doing a 500 greatest indie songs of the decade list, and excluding mainstream stuff altogether. Then I would have no issue with the subject.

So is this what it boils down to, semantics? It's not just mainstream songs that are limited: it's country, jazz, christian, folk, underground hip hop, metal, reggae, asian music, classical music etc. etc. (whose omissions actually seem far more noteworthy than missing off the latest Jordin Sparks song). There's a lot of people who could say that Pitchfork's list doesn't entirely reflect the greatest songs of the decade, and they'd be right-- but Pitchfork's list is geared towards it's target audience (those that listen primarily to indie music but also to some mainstream pop and hip hop). A multitude of websites other than Pitchfork are going to be making their "Songs of the Decade" list but each individual one isn't going to specify that it's primarily a "hip hop" list, or a "country" list or a "mainstream pop" list, and they shouldn't need to -- their target audience already takes that for granted, and so should you. It's just so obvious, and such a stupid thing to be arguing about.

[banet2001]

Aug 30, 2009 13:24:01 GMT -5 aTunes said:

So my problem is why is a website so geared towards a certain kind of music doing a greatest 500 songs of the decade? They clearly don't give mainstream music enough of a chance to be qualified to do such a general greatest songs list. They should be doing a 500 greatest indie songs of the decade list, and excluding mainstream stuff altogether. Then I would have no issue with the subject.

Why should they limit themselves? This is a list of what songs they feel are most important in the decade based on their criteria. There is absolutely no need whatsoever to include any type of corporatized label like "indie" tied to their charts. If there were some pop songs that they feel are worthy, then they included it. If some bland and generic pop songs did well on the charts but were not artistically worthy of making the chart, then they were excluded.

Any way, what genre should they limit themselves to? (Sorry, "indie" is NOT a genre. It is a rather lazy and imprecise term that does not signify anything other than a record label status). The site lists songs that range from electronica/dance to hip hop to rap to mainstream pop to rock to folk to alt-country and on and on. There is no need to limit themselves just because some people believe that every chart should be dominated by generic and mediocre pop songs simply because they did well on the charts, not whether they actually had any real artistic merit. Pitchfork has their own criteria on what they believe is important. If one wants to see the likes of We Belong Together and Boom Boom Pow dominate the end of the decade charts, then one should stick to reading the Billboard end of the decade chart, not to critics charts or genre leaning music publication charts.

[Deleted]

Aug 31, 2009 17:00:29 GMT -5 banet2001 said:

(Sorry, "indie" is NOT a genre. It is a rather lazy and imprecise term that does not signify anything other than a record label status

That alone makes this my favourite post of the week. Why can't so many people seem to wrap their heads around such a simple idea?

[divalasvegas82]

These lists provide interesting debates and are a way to discover material from lesser known artists/band, but I don't know why people take them so seriously. Just because Pitchfork or any other music site puts a song, album, or artist on a "greatest" list doesn't necessarily make it true. There is a general consensus on who some of the "greats" are from critics and a lot of the public (Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Elvis, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Bowie, etc.), but there is no universal measure of quality. At the end of the day, it's all subjective.

[HolidayGuy]

True- that's why I usually phrase it that it's a fact that such-and-such person, their work, is very acclaimed, they're gregarded as one of the greatest, most important acts, etc. etc.- noit that it's a fact that such-and-such a person is better. ) That would be subjective, indeed.

Very true, banet. "We Belong Together" got mild year-end acclaim in 2005, but Mimi just isn't a favorite with the critics, especially when talking about all-time features. Among pop acts/mainstream tracks in recent times, Rihanna's had a few singles garner decent acclaim (especially "Umbrella")- and, of course, from earlier in the decade, Beyonce's "Crazy in Love."

[Chromeozone]

Aug 30, 2009 13:03:29 GMT -5 Nevermind said:

atunes, your whole situation confuses me-- you claim to have followed Pitchfork for years, and say you know a "vast majority" of the Top 500 songs (so maybe approximately above 350?), yet you have only recently come to the realisation that P4K is not geared towards promoting mainstream singles? The kind of person who follows P4K is not the kind who a) even goes to the site expecting to see reviews and promotion of mainstream songs (do you even know why Ryan Schreiber founded the site in the first place?) and b) whose Top 5 of their personal chart would include songs like "Sweet Dreams" and "Battlefield" --surely for someone who knows just so many indie and experimental songs from this decade, and regularly goes to the most famed hipster webzine on the internet would seemingly have a wider and more eclectic music taste than listening to such generic and unoriginal Top 40 Pop?

Maybe he's a masochist ... or maybe we all are for continuing to indulge him ;)

Sept 1, 2009 0:42:40 GMT -5 divalasvegas82 said:

These lists provide interesting debates and are a way to discover material from lesser known artists/band, but I don't know why people take them so seriously. Just because Pitchfork or any other music site puts a song, album, or artist on a "greatest" list doesn't necessarily make it true. There is a general consensus on who some of the "greats" are from critics and a lot of the public (Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Elvis, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Bowie, etc.), but there is no universal measure of quality. At the end of the day, it's all subjective.

Indeed, I hope and assume most don't take it as seriously as it seems some have in this topic.

I mean, I b***h about Biology being about 260 spots lower than it should, but ultimately I forget about it 10 seconds later ;)

If you need your opinion to be validated by XXX Publication's year-end list you need more faith in your own opinion

[fridayteenage]

Gigwise's T50 sucky albums of the decade. www.soundopinions.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=21863&mode=threaded&pid=890449

50. Oasis: ‘Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants’ (2000)

49. Black Eyed Peas: ‘The E.N.D’ (2009)

48. Hard Fi: ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (2007)

47. Razorlight: ‘Razorlight’ (2006)

46. Scouting For Girls: ‘Scouting For Girls’ (2007)

45. Daniel Powter: ‘Daniel Powter’ (2005)

44. The Darkness: ‘One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back’ (2005)

42. Queen & Paul Rodgers: ‘The Cosmos Rocks’ (2008)

41. Guns N Roses: ‘Chinese Democracy’ (2008)

40. Kaiser Chiefs: ‘Yours Truly, Angry Mob’ (2007)

39. Mark Ronson: ‘Version’ (2007)

38. Puddle of Mudd: ‘Life On Display’ (2003)

37. Staind: ‘Break The Cycle’ (2001)

36. Avril Lavigne: ‘Let Go’ (2002)

35. Nickelback: ‘All The Right Reasons’ (2005)

34. The Twang: ‘Jewellery Quarter’ (2009)

33. Towers of London: ‘Blood Sweat and Towers’ (2006)

32. Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em: ’souljaboytellem.com’

31. Limp Bizkit: ‘Results May Vary’ (2003)

30. Las Ketchup: ‘Hijas del Tomate’ (2002)

29. Westlife: ‘Allow Us To Be Frank’ (2004)

28. Tokio Hotel: ‘Scream’ (2007)

27. Jennifer Lopez: ‘Rebirth’ (2005)

26. Robbie Williams: ‘Rudebox’ (2006)

25. Lindsay Lohan: ‘Speak’ (2004)

24. Mariah Carey: ‘Charmbracelet’ (2002)

23. Geri Halliwell: ‘Scream If You Wanna Go Faster’ (2001)

22. Alice Deejay: ‘Who Needs Guitars Anyway?’ (2000)

21. Ashlee Simpson: ‘I Am Me’ (2005)

20. Kelly Osbourne: ‘Changes’ (2003)

19. James Blunt: ‘Back To Bedlam’ (2004)

18. Jessica Simpson: ‘Do You Know’ (2008)

17. Craig David: ‘Born To Do It’ (2000)

16. Insane Clown Posse: ‘Bizzar’/'Bizaar’ (2000)

15. Celine Dion: ‘Taking Chances’ (2007)

14. Gareth Gates: ‘What My Heart Wants To Say’ (2003)

13. Rik Waller: ‘From Now’ (2002)

12. Enrique Iglesias: ‘Escape’ (2001)

11. Daphne & Celeste: ‘We Didn’t Say That!’ (2000)

10. Vanilla Ice: ‘Bi-Polar’ (2001)

9. Victoria Beckham: ‘Victoria Beckham’ (2001)

8. The Cheeky Girls: ‘Party Time’ (2004)

7. Paris Hilton: ‘Paris’ (2006)

6. Chris Cornell: ‘Scream’ (2009)

5. Kevin Federline: ‘Playing With Fire’ (2006)

4. brokeNCYDE: ‘I’m Not A Fan… But The Kids Like It’ (2009)

3. Crazy Frog: ‘Crazy Hits’ (2005)

2. The Jonas Brothers: ‘A Little Bit Longer’ (2008)

1. Katie Price & Peter Andre: ‘A Whole New World’ (2006)

[banet2001]

Kevin Federline was robbed. He deserved the number one spot of the decade on the Gigwise album chart. >:(

[HolidayGuy]

^LOL I overlooked the "sucky" aspect of that list and I was thinkin', WTH? hehe

[aTunes]

Poor Nickelback, they'll never get any respect from critics. Of course with sales like theirs, why the hell should they care?

[WotUNeed]

>:(

Sept 13, 2009 9:19:05 GMT -5 fridayteenage said:

50. Oasis: ‘Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants’ (2000)
45. Daniel Powter: ‘Daniel Powter’ (2005)
29. Westlife: ‘Allow Us To Be Frank’ (2004)
17. Craig David: ‘Born To Do It’ (2000)
14. Gareth Gates: ‘What My Heart Wants To Say’ (2003)

>:( >:(

Sept 13, 2009 9:19:05 GMT -5 fridayteenage said:

44. The Darkness: ‘One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back’ (2005)
12. Enrique Iglesias: ‘Escape’ (2001)

>:( >:( >:(

Sept 13, 2009 9:19:05 GMT -5 fridayteenage said:

40. Kaiser Chiefs: ‘Yours Truly, Angry Mob’ (2007)
39. Mark Ronson: ‘Version’ (2007)
26. Robbie Williams: ‘Rudebox’ (2006)
19. James Blunt: ‘Back To Bedlam’ (2004)

[when the pawn...]

Yeah, I didn't really understand why Oasis and Mark Ronson are on that list.

[HolidayGuy]

aTunes, Nickelback makes safe, made-for-mass-consumption music, sand that kind of music (especially when done consistently) rarely gets high critical marks (see Mimi, though at least a couple of her records received mild critical acclaim). Same for Dauightry, who even cited Nickelback as an influence (shudder).

Oasis has received a lot of acclaim (especially for Definitely Maybe and What's the Story...), but not for its 2000 album or any of those songs.

[Young Money]

Does anyone have a list of the best selling rappers of this decade and of all time?

I know all time would contain Nelly, Eminem, 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Dr. Dre,OutKast, 2pac, BIG, Diddy, etc

[banet2001]

Here is #151 - 200 of Pitchfork's top 200 albums of the 2000's.

pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/7706-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-200-151/

200. Jay Reatard
Blood Visions
[In the Red; 2006]

A true sleeper phenomenon, Jay Reatard's breakout record is still creeping up on critics and fans well after its release. Blood Visions is a crossover in the best sense of the term, stealing the raucous energy and attitude of punk, the melodies of power pop, and the rough ingenuity of bedroom recording. Reatard (née Jay Lindsey) uses everything at his disposal to make symphonies of the simplest parts: an impassioned yelp, an acoustic guitar, flying-V riffs, bitter (and occasionally violent) lyrics. All it took was a little bit of actual singing and mixing some melody in with the bile for him to stand up and be counted; but like the album's cover, he'll be covered in blood during the counting.

199. Deerhoof
Apple O'
[5 Rue Christine; 2003]

"The modern-day composer refuses to die." So said your parents' very own modern-day composer Frank Zappa (quoting Varèse), and though countless **people who just so happen to have an opinion that I disagree with and therefore I think it is inferior to mine** will try to convince you otherwise, originality is always possible. Deerhoof are a case in point: the Bay Area quartet makes music that's punk, but pop; noisy but pretty; thoroughly composed, but explosively performed. Apple O' caught them at the tipping point between their noisier early days and the comparatively delicate art-pop of all of their records since. Like many of the best bands of the decade (Animal Collective, LCD Soundsystem, the Knife), Deerhoof makes immediately identifiable music with seemingly scores of imitators-- yet, nobody else has managed to produce anything quite like "Sealed With a Kiss", or the Ravel-esque "The Forbidden Fruits". If musical hybrids fell like low-hanging fruit in the 00s, Apple O' was a ripe, early masterpiece.

198. Boris
Akuma No Uta
[Southern Lord; 2005]

Listen to any random track from Akuma No Uta, and many influences pop to mind-- Earth, Motörhead, Stooges, Blue Öyster Cult, Fus**tsusha. But listen to the entire album in one long, rapturous sitting, and it's hard to imagine it being made by anyone but Boris. Charging, smoke-filled, and raw, it's the tonal opposite of Nick Drake, whose Bryter Layter album cover is recreated on the front. But just as Drake was devoted to gentle sounds and downbeat moods, Boris are obsessively committed to fuzzy riffs and heavy rhythms, whether deployed in long, shivering drones, or fiery, chugging blasts. The album's centerpiece, the swaying 12-minute jam "Naki Kyoku", actually begins in a reflective mood not far from Drake's melancholia. But, as on the rest of Akuma No Uta, Boris takes that inspiration and burns it away, leaving a trail of smoke rings that clearly spell the band's name.

197. Yeasayer
All Hour Cymbals
[We Are Free; 2007]

With the kind of crackling analog warmth a lot of listeners wish they got from Animal Collective, Yeasayer's debut record established a demilitarized zone between some formerly opposite impulses: paranoid post-punk yelps and psychedelic, harmonized chants, noodly guitar riffs and ambient keyboard washes, electronic and acoustic instruments working in harmony. The end result is impossible to categorize, which in modern times of rampant pigeonholing might just be one of the best compliments you could give.

196. William Basinski
The Disentegration Loops
[2062; 2003]

The four-volume set The Disintegration Loops, came with an unusually compelling backstory: veteran multimedia artist William Baskinski, attempting to digitize tape loops he'd made years ago, found the magnetic material in an advanced state of decay, which caused bits of music to disappear with each pass over the tape heads. So the sounds, hypnotic and magnificently textured in their own right, were literally falling apart and vanishing into the air as the pieces progressed, resulting in music that feels heavy with sadness and loss even as it feels spectral and weightless. Adding another layer of poignancy, the distressed tapes were transferred to digital around the time of September 11, and the Brooklyn-based Baskinski created a DVD version of the project, setting the crumbling music to a static video he shot of smoldering Lower Manhattan, an image also used for the CD covers. Born of an unlikely convergence of time, place, and circumstance, The Disintegration Loops has lost none of its overwhelming beauty in the intervening years.

195. Bonnie "Prince" Billy
The Letting Go
[Palace/Drag City; 2006]

The solemn strings that open "Love Comes to Me"-- the first track on The Letting Go-- indirectly echo the sumptuous opening of Schubert's String Quintet in C Major, one of the most ethereal pieces of music ever written. Arranged by Nico Muhly, who is quickly becoming indie rock's unofficial house composer, they signal the album's feeling of grave finality, implied by the title and reinforced everywhere on the album, from the contented sigh of Will Oldham's singing to the far-away backing vocals of Dawn McCarthy, who drifts in and out of the album seemingly at her own will. Drained of tension, suffused with wisdom and bottomless sadness, and graced by weary resignation, The Letting Go feels like the calm certainty of someone who has glimpsed the beyond.

194. Pulp
We Love Life
[Island; 2001]

After an awkward stage that lasted more than a decade, Pulp emerged in the 1990s as the oversexed life of the party. By the end of the decade, they were on the hellish taxi ride home. We Love Life picked up where This Is Hardcore left off, shaking off the hangover to face whatever comes next. Jarvis Cocker squints against the sunlight, going figuratively back underground on "Weeds" and literally underground to a river that flows beneath the city on "Wickerman". His road to happiness is littered with death, sadness, heartbreak, and confusion, but there's still room for a joke, and we get Pulp's best on "Bad Cover Version". The rest of the group and producer Scott Walker create a sumptuous atmosphere for Cocker's journey toward a new life. He finally arrives there on the majestic closer, "Sunrise", a rousing farewell for one of the most original bands of the last 30 years.

193. Devendra Banhart
Rejoicing in the Hands
[Young God; 2004]

If New Weird America had actually existed, "This Is the Way" would have been its national anthem. The credo opens Devendra Banhart's first proper and only essential album and immediately delivers attitude and confidence, declaring Banhart's prerogatives as an individual (beards, sharing, nostalgia, nature) and his aspirations for overcoming the mundane and mute. Sure, Banhart picks his tinny guitar gingerly and offers his plain words politely, but he's just a shepherd delivering a proclamation wrapped in sheep's clothing: "We've known/ We've had a choice/ We chose rejoice," he closes, rejecting everything but the brambly, uncertain path ahead. The songs that follow are guileless and spirited, as equally dependent on wry winks ("This Beard Is for Siobhan") as uncloaked sentiments ("Autumn's Child). Michael Gira's spartan production and strong editing distill the power of Banhart's vibrato and vision while giving the songs the space such oddball beauties deserve. Simple and elegant, Rejoicing remains the jewel of the nebulous moment it led.

192. Art Brut
Bang Bang Rock & Roll
[Fierce Panda; 2005]

The world won't listen. Four years after Art Brut (went for) broke, way too many bands are still doing it wrong. Turning their blandness up to 11 and hoping they'll blend in enough to be anthemic. Expertly borrowing the styles of their heroes-- whether that's the Velvet Underground, Gang of Four, or, hell, the Shaggs-- but sorely lacking the spirit. What spirit? Any spirit. Or playing it cool behind the microphone, as if on the off chance someone might hallucinate they have charisma. Like The Modern Lovers for a generation weaned on The Blue Album, Art Brut's hugely fun debut projected frontman Eddie Argos's Pulp-like wit onto ironically serious songs about art, girls, and endearingly personal neuroses-- I still don't get all the Italian references. For those about to form a band, they salute you.

191. Air
Talkie Walkie
[Astralwerks; 2004]

Sometimes it pays to know who you are: Air have mined their little vein of electronic music so fastidiously over the last decade that they're now the de facto gold standard of new-age Gallic pop. Despite that standing, their carefully manicured and occasionally over-polite music tends to be respected by critics rather than revered. This might explain why Talkie Walkie slipped by relatively unheralded; with its baroque arrangements, shivery arpeggios, hushed vocals, and meticulous attention to other micro-sized details, Talkie Walkie remains a quiet masterpiece. Like Beck's Sea Change, another occasionally maligned Nigel Godrich production, this is an acquired taste that impresses in slow drips rather than showy bursts. As opening trifectas go, though, they don't come much lovelier than "Venus", "Cherry Blossom Girl", and "Run".

190. Elliott Smith
Figure 8
[Dreamworks; 2000]

Having completed the transition from acoustic bedroom folk to intricately orchestrated Beatlesque pop with 1998's XO, Elliott Smith took a more understated approach with 2000's Figure 8. Not quite as intimate as his earliest records and not quite brash and bombastic like its immediate predecessor, Figure 8 marks a subtle refinement of Smith's songwriting skills. Figure 8 is notable for its confidence and its discipline-- neither of which is a particularly flashy trait. But with this surer footing came deeper expeditions into the timeless gestural language of big-C Classic rock, making Figure 8 one of Smith's most accessible and enjoyable records.

189. Jamie Lidell
Multiply
[Warp; 2005]

Listen to Jamie Lidell's earlier records-- his aptly-titled solo debut Muddlin Gear or his Super_Collider work with Cristian Vogel-- and you hear a playful yet restless Jack-of-all-trades trying to find his voice. Fast forward to 2005's Multiply, and he's found it: As Mark Pytlik notes in his Pitchfork write-up of the album, Multiply is most definitely reverential to its antecedents, and they're often worn proudly on the sleeve of each track. Whenever Lidell makes a not-so-subtle gesture towards his R&B forefathers, he does so with a healthy amount of polite disrespect-- Multiply is seasoned with enough electronic chicanery seamlessly integrated into the mix to remind folks that the record was in fact sharing discography space with equally individual talents like Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. And whether he's vamping and squiggling like a young eager-to-impress Prince on "When I Come Back Around" or crooning like a heartbroken old soul on the album's show-stopping closer "Game For Fools", there's no mistaking that Multiply is first and foremost a remarkable statement made by a remarkable artist.

188. M83
Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts
[Gooom; 2003]

Before he would construct dream-pop anthems out of John Hughes' celluloid teen angst, Anthony Gonzalez (and then-bandmate Nicolas Fromageau) gave us this behemoth of sound. Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts is the biggest M83 record, leaving listeners-- those poor flattened souls-- pancaked in its wake. But for all of that weight, the distorted guitar-and-synth walls of run-to-your-grave epics "America" and "0078h" (which always seemed to me just as post-rock as they were shoegaze), there was real warmth to the album. The slower-paced, ethereal qualities of "In Church" and "On a White Lake, Near a Green Mountain" hinted at the romance of future M83 tracks.

187. Stars of the Lid
The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid
[Kranky; 2001]

On The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid, Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride create a deep pool of drone so heavy that its gravity pulls in sounds around it, swallowing them whole. The band was having a bit of a laugh at its own expense with the self-deprecating album title-- this was their seventh record of impossibly thick, slow ambience, and here they expanded their palette of timbres and stretched out over two full CDs to let each piece breathe as deeply as possible. Intense patience is a hallmark of any great drone music; Wiltzie and McBride have patience in spades and bring a designer's detailed touch to every sound they make to craft an ambient opus that's as welcoming as it is esoteric.

186. The Thermals
The Body, the Blood, the Machine


The Thermals' third full-length is a cautionary tale about the dangers of a totalitarian, theocratic regime, and it could only have sprung from anger and frustration with the George W. Bush administration. The lyrical gravitas of religious iconography and damn-the-man slogans gave the Portland pop-punk band renewed purpose, but it could have been just more hot air if it wasn't married to such incendiary riffs, sexy, throbbing basslines, and urgent, earnest melodies. Most recent protest music is pedantic and plodding, but with the Thermals' joyously sloppy delivery and imaginative (and not-so-literal) storytelling, they revitalized the genre for a new generation.

185. Scarface
The Fix
[Def Jam South; 2002]

Scarface aficionados might question Facemob's sole New York-focused Def Jam record as a representative of the artist's best work. But if The Fix proves anything, it's that Scarface is a world unto himself, the rare rapper whose utter musical weight, gravitas, and gravitational pull is so strong that an entire city's aesthetic bends in his direction when he deigns to subsume it. What is so unique about The Fix is that, from a macro view, it doesn't sound anything like a 2002-era corporate New York rap record, despite Kanye West's perfect soul basslines and Neptunes guest production spots; Scarface's lyrics are unchanged, the same stories from the South Side of Houston, the same engagement with the same drug game, the same unyielding honesty and unwillingness to sacrifice ideals.

184. Vitalic
OK Cowboy
[PIAS; 2005]

While the electronica push of the late-1990s was considered an epic fail well before 2000, it did accelerate the conversation between rock and electronic music. Over the next decade, the sequencer would become a common sight on rock stages, and a legion of DJs (especially the French) responded in kind by infusing house-music juggernauts with the hyper-distorted wallop of power chords. Daft Punk and Justice reveled in gloriously superficial properties of rock, the Aqua-Net and motivational platitudes. But Vitalic came first, and appropriately, Vitalic was almost punk, going at his ring-modded synths and acid squelches as if they were his first Sears-catalog guitar. His peers want to inspire you, but sometimes, you worry Vitalic is trying to kill you.

183. Arctic Monkeys
Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
[Domino, 2006]

There's a fine line when it comes to precociousness. Pre-teen geniuses? Adorable. Deeply cynical, shockingly self-aware 19-year-olds? Kind of a downer. Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner is the exception that proves the rule. He cuts the Holden Caulfield figure perfectly, moping around Sheffield and observing the Chav life. The Monkeys initially won freakishly enthusiastic acclaim for their clenched-fist stomp, raucous guitar attack, and sodden attitude on songs like "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor". But what endures are the weary ballads. "Riot Van" is so elegant and detailed about the perils of the boys in blue it almost insists on soundtracking an Irvine Welsh novel. "When the Sun Goes Down" is scarily well-written-- the type of song that sounds a million years old the moment it begins. Even the jaunty "Fake Tales of San Francisco" is drooling bile. Sometimes growing up too fast ain't so bad.

182. Max Tundra
Mastered by Guy at the Exchange
[Tigerbeat6; 2002]

Ben Jacobs had to use words. Crafty and clever as his earlier works were, he had more to say this time, and so he started writing pop songs-- intricate and busy songs that balanced on a hair his OCD and his ADHD, but songs that were catchy and wondrous as well. He started to sing (and sister Becky pitched in). He wrote about temp labor, old vinyl, amino acids, and, oh yeah, girls. That was the best bit: Now he could sing about girls and crushes and love. In true British fashion, he brought a modest persona to rainbow-shredding music that charm the heart and overclocks the brain. There's joy in every byte of his tunes: the joy of gazing at girls, and gazing at light-emitting diodes, and telling the world how glorious they both are. --Chris Dahlen

181. Andrew Bird
Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs
[Righteous Babe; 2005]

The world ends not with a bang or a whimper, but with a party. Between 2001 and 2003, Andrew Bird doused his Bowl of Fire, moved to a farm, and fell through the stylistic looking glass into a weird world entirely his own. The Mysterious Production of Eggs is the greatest statement to leak out of that world onto a record. Sheets upon sheets of plucked and bowed violin are joined by his singular whistle and painterly voice to frame homicidal personal ads, tales of children's brains measured for defects, and musings on the long odds of biology. It's thoroughly original, from the gentle lilt of "Sovay" to the tidal rush of "Fake Palindromes", the eerie murk of "A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left" and the Ravel-quoting bounce of "Skin Is, My". When it all caves in, Bird will be there to play amidst the rubble, and you should join him if you can. There will be snacks.

180. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus
[Anti-; 2004]

The script called for Nick Cave to settle into mellow middle age, but the singer clearly would have none of it. Whether it was the departure of longtime potentiator Blixa Bargeld or merely the singer approaching 50, something reignited a fire under Cave and his protean partners the Bad Seeds in the mid-2000s that smolders to this day. But even taking into account the subsequent highs of Grinderman and Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!! the epic Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus remains Cave's top work this decade. After all, it was on this double-disc opus that Cave not only reinvigorated his already vicious and virile fire and brimstone bluster with equal parts gospel and grunge, but nudged a little bit more humor to the fore as well. Indeed, if the highlights of this collection are too numerous to single out, Cave must take particular satisfaction in rhyming "Orpheus" with "orifice" in the most lewd manner possible.

179. Camera Obscura
Let's Get Out of This Country
[Merge; 2006]

Whether by proxy, presentation, or straight-up patronage, Camera Obscura's lace-collared pop seemed doomed to be eclipsed by Belle and Sebastian comparisons. Though valid, 2006's Let's Get Out of This Country captured a band getting out from underneath a hefty legacy the best way any group can: great songs. Front to back, this was the Glaswegian sextet's finest set yet, full of golden melodies made all the stickier and more durable by Tracyanne Campbell's new tales of heartache. Showroom strings and wedding organ gave the homerun title track and winners like "Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken" and "Come Back Margaret" a schmaltzy pop in which Campbell couldn't have sounded more capable of juicing your pleasure center, whether you needed a laugh or a cry. Every flourish was in its right place.

178. Lil Wayne
Tha Carter II
[Cash Money; 2005]

The first Carter was when Wayne started calling himself the "best rapper alive" straight-faced, but Tha Carter II was when people stopped laughing at that claim. Wayne, once a non-cussing kiddie rapper, had hardened his delivery into an elemental croak, and he'd somehow learned the rare ability to craft punchlines so sticky that they'd bounce around in your head all day. He'd also learned not to show all his cards at once. Instead of just telling us about the gun in his trunk, he let loose with something oblique like this: "Riding by myself, well really not really/ So heavy in the trunk, make the car pop a wheelie." And perhaps most importantly, this was his first album not produced by Mannie Fresh, and he had the good sense to replace Fresh's punchy ADD electro with swampy, primordial thuds that gave his jokes urgency and force.

177. Broadcast
The Noise Made By People
[Warp; 2000]

Their first singles ticked off their references-- the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the United States of America, Nico. On this debut Broadcast set about the task of forging them into a world. It's a strange world too, as antique as the Clientele's and as skewed and chilly as the Knife's, its wintry spaces filled with echo and chimes and analogue ghosts. But once you start exploring it you'll find its inhabitants more hospitable than you'd imagined. Singer Trish Keenan can weave spells-- the baffling, lingering "Echo's Answer"-- but she can also be tender, beckoning a shy companion on "Come On Let's Go", chiding a suspicious lover on "Papercuts". Broadcast are at home on creaking synths but they can summon a stiff, fogbound groove when needed-- like the RZA-esque "Dead the Long Year". On later releases Broadcast's confidence and songwriting grew stronger, but they've never sounded quite this bewitching or curious.

176. The Mountain Goats
Tallahasse
[4AD; 2002]

For a decade, John Darnielle's jackhammer strum and lamb-to-slaughter bleat sketched short, tape-hissy tales of big, big rabbits, orange balls of hate, dysfunction, violence, isolation, and a Google Maps' site worth of geography. In 2002, he changed things up a bit, not only booking an actual studio, but carrying a suitcase of favorite tropes to Florida's panhandle-- home to previous bit players, the alpha couple-- for an entire album length's stay. Good short story writers don't always make good novelists. But Tallahassee is a vivid, fully-realized night-sweat of a song cycle in which the breakdown of your average awful marriage (you probably know a few) assumes gothic proportions. "No Children", everyone's favorite mutual-self-destruction sing-along, is unquestionably bleak. But the tracklist abounds with less-celebrated scenes of abject terror and despair, from "The House That Dripped Blood"'s husky chords and open throat of a cellar door, to the delicately lit powder kegs of "International Small Arms Traffic Blues". Schadenfreude (or empathy) rarely sounded this delicious (or depressing).

[banet2001]

175. Various Artists
Total 3
[Kompakt; 2001]

Like most great compilations, this one stands for slightly more than itself. Total 3 felt, from some vantage points, like the moment where Cologne's Kompakt label announced itself to the wider world. From here on out, its elegantly cloudy take on minimal techno and microhouse-- gusty, sparkling ambience yoked to the steady beat of dance music, low on bangers and high on subtleties-- would become a big part of the decade. Of course, Total 3 isn't just on this list as a stand-in; it's here because it's terrific all by itself, because it's a lot of what earned all that attention. Sedate hustles and throbs, dark crawls, colorful funk, the glorious sentimentality of Jürgen Paape's "So Weit Wie Noch Nie"-- this collection can be mesmerizing, and it's beautifully built around a core aesthetic. Thinking of it merely as the dance style that crossed over-- the warm-bath techno that turned the heads of even the techno-skeptical-- does it a disservice; it ignores just how well-formed and flexible and satisfying this stuff can be, no matter whose ear it's catching.

174. Okkervil River
Black Sheep Boy
[Jagjaguwar; 2005]

Doomed folkie Tim Hardin plays Virgil for Will Sheff, touring the Okkervil River frontman through a rock'n'roll purgatory of bloodthirsty drifters, damaged women, and drug-frayed anthropomorphic metaphors. Less "Behind the Music" than either of the band's excellent follow-ups, The Stage Names or The Stand Ins, Black Sheep Boy is a rock picaresque that's touched with very little of those LP's bone-deep cynicism. It succeeds not merely by Sheff's literate wordplay, dynamically angsty melodies, or even his deep knowledge of a rock-historical footnote, but by the way Okkervil River click together as a band more strongly than they had on previous albums. They serve as both the pit orchestra for Sheff's staged plays and a clever foil for his unhinged performances, like when they nail the stop-start urgency of "For Real" and impart a bittersweet country shuffle to "A Stone", or when Jonathan Meiburg undercuts the bleak "Black" with a cheerily ascending keyboard melody that lets a beam of hope shine into Sheff's dark world. The result is one of the best rock biographies of the decade and a concept album that's all heart.

173. Herbert
Bodily Functions
[K7; 2001]

Matthew Herbert's career has zigzagged between styles and approaches-- minimalist house tracks, lounge jazz, politically motivated musique concrète-- but Bodily Functions is the one album where all his tendencies come together. Recorded with his then-partner Dani Siciliano, the album continues Around the House's investigations into intimacy and identity both lyrically and literally, with much of the source material sampled from "bodily functions" like clacking teeth and brushing hair. But the music's too lush to feel pedantic, thanks in large part to Siciliano's delivery, which swings between defiance and vulnerability, and to arrangements that lean heavily on jazz piano and brushed drums. On the more uptempo cuts, classic deep house provides the blueprint for skippy, tidy rhythm tracks. That Herbert and Siciliano eventually parted ways, in retrospect, may not be surprising: an almost overwhelming melancholy beats at the album's heart-- a sadness so insurmountable it brings its own kind of peace.

172. Constantines
Shine a Light


Music writers get so swept up in classification, we might think a label like "Fugazi-meets-Springsteen" is more important than relating lyrics like "To hell with the mill sallow chorus/ Lift your body out of exile," or describing the brittle grooves and airplane-hangar roar behind the hoarse protests and prayers of Constantines singers Bryan Webb and Steven Lambke. The Cons' fury resists getting summarized or blurbed. So what of Fugazi's (or, sigh, Springsteen's) wide wake of influence, even in this decade? The Constantines deserve praise for holding to the romance and promise of earlier rock'n'roll while simultaneously deconstructing it, if only for the sake of discovering something. Whatever equation you want to throw at them, the breadth of expression on Shine a Light stuns: The ground covered between "Nighttime/Anytime (It's Alright)" to "On to You" includes feral, bruised, proud, frightened, and fully confident songs.

171. The Go! Team
Thunder, Lightning, Strike
[Memphis Industries; 2004]

At the end of the decade, lo-fi had become a fashionable option, a recording approach made less out of necessity than out of fashion. But there's a third path, and while making a record on a cassette tape in 2009 may be a stubborn and affected act, there is still allure and aesthetic purpose in giving music a grainy feel in spite of GarageBand. See government exhibit labeled the Go! Team, whose 2004 debut used less than ideal recording conditions to evoke documentary-filmstrip soundtracks, TV cop shows, and girl-group 45s. This nostalgia-fetish genre-quilting was nothing new post-Odelay, but Go! Team mastermind Ian Parton proved himself a basement bandleader with an ear for authenticity that didn't strangle him creatively-- switching mid-song from soft-focus flute-driven instrumental to turntablism breakdowns in "Get It Together" or blending 1960s Motown with 80s Bronx on "Ladyflash".

170. Bright Eyes
Fevers and Mirrors
[Saddle Creek; 2000]

Bruce Springsteen sounded haunted on Nebraska, where even he found redemption scarce. Counting Crows located Omaha "somewhere in middle America," a faintly sinister phrase, as if Nebraska's largest city were an island lost on the plains-- isolated, impenetrable, maybe imaginary. Conor Oberst, Omaha's native son, caught this Nebraska-of-the-mind in amber with Fevers and Mirrors, the pinnacle (and conclusion) of his wrought yet raw early style. It conjures a stark, entrapping world: "This barren land is alive tonight," Oberst whimpers on "Arienette", as wolves prowl implacably behind acres of rustling corn. Measurements of time and space accumulate-- clocks tick, calendar pages float away, scales tip, the sun reels up and down-- and nothing changes. Memories of happiness and presentiments of loss, unearned arrogance and unearned guilt, well-being and addiction, all collide in a stalemate. It's about helplessness: How a fever takes you violently, and a mirror can only reflect what it sees. It's about being marooned, somewhere in Middle America, between childhood and adulthood, on the dark island of your mind.

169. Common
Like Water for Chocolate
[MCA; 2000]

Like Water for Chocolate isn't Common's most classic record (that's 1994's Resurrection) but it's his most fully realized. Much like that record, Like Water is visible evidence of a rapper wrestling with his street background and growing self-awareness, of conservative tendencies and an ambitious need for exploration. Com bravely embraced Jay Dee's Soulquarian vision for an alternative future, while retaining a distinctly personal sound and identity that situated him outside of his Chicago origins. Com still carried the baggage, both negative and positive, of Chicago's South Side streets-- casual homophobic slurs mar the otherwise-flawless "Dooinit"-- but this baggage also charges his raps with the energy that would seep from his voice the closer he came to Gap spokesrapper, his trash-talking ("he fell off 'cause I pushed him") as believable as his growing personal dimension ("The Light"). It helps that J Dilla wraps Common's lyrics in the swirling emotional nuance of complex-yet-hooky tracks like "Funky for You". The end result was a singular record in music history, with a sui generis style both artists would fail to replicate.

168. Califone
Roots and Crowns
[Thrill Jockey; 2006]

"Leave your memories/ We're almost new," sings Califone's Tim Rutili on "3 Legged Animals", a standout track on an album his band of nearly a decade almost didn't make. Break-ups, cross-country moves, and an attempt to quit put Califone's future in question, but, as he suggests, they returned refreshed, capping their best set of songs (fine roots) with their most intricate arrangements (resplendent crowns). Here, Califone bend, break, and blend pedestrian sounds (fiddle moans, horn growls, chiming bells, lurking bass), while Rutili splices standard images-- raindrops, pills, bones-- until they weave into impressionistic webs. Almost new here, Califone-- more than any American act since Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-- struck a righteous balance between the obtuse and the accessible.

167. Annie
Anniemal
[679; 2004]

Few genres got a bigger boost from file-sharing in the early years of this decade than danceable European pop music. The spread of mp3s around the world allowed for the creation of a thriving global pop underground teeming with shoulda-been hits by coulda-been stars who previously had few options to find an audience outside of the tight playlists of corporate radio. Annie, an enigmatic Norwegian bombshell with a sweet wispy voice and a taste for slick neo-80s production, was the first of these acts to make it big on the same terms as countless indie bands-- well outside the bounds of the mainstream, but beloved by a significant number of fans hungry for the sort of dazzling, witty, and unabashedly hooky pop music that had nearly vanished from American radio. Unsurprisingly, most of the attention on Annie's debut record, Anniemal, was placed on the singles-- the melancholy hyperballad "Heartbeat" and the delightfully coy "Chewing Gum" stand as two of the great almost-hits of the decade-- but the entire album is stacked with gems, from Richard X's effervescent "Me Plus One" to the psychedelic disco meltdown of "Come Together".

166. Jim O'Rourke
Insignificance
[Drag City; 2001]

Despite the Swiftian invective of the title, Insignificance marks a lot of milestones in producer/composer Jim O'Rourke's career. The third of his records named after a Nicolas Roeg flick, Insignificance marked O'Rourke's move from Chicago, where he had helped shape the experimental jazz and post-rock music scenes, to New York, and to date remains his solo effort most concerned with pop accessibility. O'Rourke even sings bemusedly in his poor-man's-Bill-Callahan about being on the cusp: the subject of opener "All Downhill From Here" is self-evident, and standout "Therefore, I Am" has O'Rourke offering personal re-affirmation, a fresh start, and a heavy-handed fuck-off to an unnamed subject. "Therefore, I Am" is set against the backdrop of a ridiculously repetitive, infectious guitar riff and Ringo-esque drums-- a curiosity for the improvisational O'Rourke, but here it smartly comes off as a smirking indictment of rock alchemy-- and it glides into a falsetto chorus with echoes of girl-groups or the Beach Boys. O'Rourke carries all it off so elegantly that you'd think he'd address the trivial little matter of pop songcraft a little more often.

165. Ricardo Villalobos
Alcachofa
[Playhouse; 2003]

The Chilean-born, Frankfurt-raised DJ/producer Ricardo Villalobos spent a decade quietly earning a cult rep for his nervy, elliptical approach to underground techno before he turned dance music on its ear with his 2003 album debut. While he's often singled out for his purported minimalism, Alcachofa's real innovation was to recast chugging, 4/4 rhythms in a mercurial casing more akin to krautrock's shape-changing forms, with loops inside loops inside loops undulating toward a disappearing horizon. The album contains two bona fide anthems. "Easy Lee" sets a cryptic, vocodered chorus to a sparse, tribally backing that feels like it's made out of plastic and putty; "Dexter" offsets a relaxed, four-square glide with spindly chord changes that seem never to resolve, ratcheting up the tension with every repetition. Less effusive cuts like "Bahaha Hahi" and "Fool's Garden (Black Conga)", meanwhile, throb with a coiled intensity far out of proportion to the modesty of their materials.

164. Les Savy Fav
Rome (Written Upside Down) EP
[Southern; 2000]

Rome, written upside down. The Statue of Liberty, pixelated and fallen. An analogy for the decline of empires? Maybe, but Les Savy Fav's fall of America isn't some political attack-- it's a dystopian vision of a world where empires crumble because there's no one left to sustain them, where humanity is subsumed by its technology. The band tosses and turns in the throes of its afterfuture dreams on a bed of glitched-up, brittle post-punk that still sounds like the future despite a total lack of obviously futuristic audio signifiers. For about 18 perfect minutes, Les Savy Fav bottled post-Millennial dread and served it up cold for a thirsty, anxious audience.

163. DJ /rupture
Uproot
[The Agriculture; 2008]

With so much music being released every day, strategic listening and contextualization is an art form, of which Jace Clayton (aka DJ /rupture) is a master. He carries the flame for connoisseurship in an era of dilettantism, rejecting rapid consumption and quantity-over-quality: The best is out there; with patience, we can find it, and weave it into a story that says something penetrating about how it feels to be alive, right now. On the surface, Uproot is simply a potent array of music, mixed in a deep field by someone with exquisitely exotic tastes. More fundamentally, it's a thesis on the collapse of musical borders-- between listener and artist, between regional styles, between genres-- that has characterized the Internet age. On a universal thread of drums and bass, Clayton draws out seamless connections between Brooklyn and Afghanistan, dubstep and ragga, hearing and making. Music is revealed, actually not-ruptured, in all its splendid commonality. For Clayton there are, at most, two kinds: Wonderful music, which should be collected, pondered, and put into a dialogue; and non-wonderful music, for which one simply has no time.

162. Wu-Tang Clan
The W
[Sony; 2000]

By 2000, to put it very lightly, the Wu-Tang Clan had diversified their bonds. RZA's original plan for the group ended with 1997's Forever, and by the turn of the millennium, many fans lamented the loss of his hold over the group, which had more or less devolved into a watered-down brand stamped onto a variety of middling stuff. In this context, The W was as surprising as it was pleasing, packing some of the RZA's best production work, and some of the group's best music. "Hollow Bones" and "Careful (Click, Click)" are two of the scariest cuts in the Wu-catalog, and few songs this decade can match the ardor of RZA's breakdown on the stunning Isaac Hayes cop "I Can't Go to Sleep". Released a mere 18 days before Bush v. Gore would plague us with eight years of that other W, The W provided a fitting soundtrack for those with a freshly bleak outlook on the future.

161. Air France
No Way Down
[Sincerely Yours; 2008]

Joel Karlsson and Henrik Markstedt's music may be fantasy, but there's also an unusual, deeply felt awareness that pop interacts with the all too real world around us. Electronic music is often associated with indoors, so they brought it outdoors. Gothenburg gets cold, so they partied on the beach whenever possible. Someday, when the Balearic revival has its week on "American Idol", their full-length debut-- actually two EPs, but they work better together-- will stand out for its pop melodies, luxuriantly vivid sense of place, and the wistful quality generated by those sampled, young voices-- their sadness is kids' stuff, but that doesn't make it imaginary.

160. Deerhunter
Cryptograms
[Kranky; 2007]

Never mind the lost album sales; the abundance of leaked demos, YouTubed concert footage, and radio-session webcasts at our disposal has ultimately served to take the mystery out of the artist's evolutionary process-- it's increasingly difficult to be surprised by a band's new direction when we've been riding shotgun the whole time. Back in early 2007, before frontman Bradford Cox's every move was documented online, Deerhunter used their second album as a canvas on which to chart their aesthetic transformation. Defenders of the album format in an mp3 age often point to the medium's capacity to take listeners on a journey; on Cryptograms, the journey is the band's own. The remarkable thing about the record isn't just that Deerhunter deftly execute strobe-lit psych-punk squall ("Lake Somerset"), acidic disco ("Octet"), and sensitive jangle-pop ("Hazel St.") with equal conviction, but that they make them all seem like logical points on the same continuum. And those miasmic ambient set pieces aren't just there as breathers, but rather as emblems of a band that's being perpetually melted down and reshaped from song to song.

159. Girl Talk
Night Ripper
[Illegal Art; 2006]

Since multitasking is now our national pastime, an entity like Girl Talk was an inevitable phenomenon; as our attention spans shrink to the nano-scale, one song at a time just no longer is enough. All we needed was someone to step up and act as filter to the unstoppable torrent of pop music bursting our cognitive dams, saving us the time of listening to 500 songs sequentially and giving us the best parts in an overlapping and interlocking efficiency! But the flood of Internet mashups were unimpeachable evidence that no, not everyone can do this, and along came biomedical engineer Gregg Gillis, the Michael Phelps of cutting-and-pasting, to be our beat-matching hero. Now that Wikipedia has spoiled all the Easter eggs, Night Ripper still sports brilliantly catchy (Big Boi Breeders), bizarrely virtuoso (Juelz Mangum Airplane) and oddly emotional moments (Biggie John) to tide you over as you squeeze a five-course meal into a piece of gum, Willy Wonka-style.

158. Destroyer
Destroyer's Rubies
[Merge; 2006]

In the vivid worlds he creates as Destroyer, Dan Bejar is a cad, a self-conscious socialite, and the bard of a made-up bourgeoisie, and Destroyer's Rubies is his best-yet work under the moniker. The tics and themes that make his music so undeniably his are all here, as is the shaggy jazz and folk-rock, the coy glam posturing, and the swatches of lives cast in abstruse metaphors. Taken all at once, Rubies is decadent, mapping a haute coutureclass system of well-off hipster intellectuals, idle painters, subcultural demigods, and of course, the beautiful women always just out of reach; Bejar further cuts his observations with tweedy references to Ezra Pound, Tchaikovsky, the Incredible String Band, and the Greek goddess Clytæmnestra. "I was the dominant theme in a number of places," indeed: Bejar's self-referentiality reaches its peak here as well-- Rubies is the ultimate index of Destroyer mythology, the artist fitting himself into the background of his work.

157. Lightning Bolt
Wonderful Rainbow
[Load; 2003]

If the title of Lightning Bolt's third LP seems redundant-- aren't all rainbows wonderful?-- that's probably intentional. Because this duo's pounding, relentless repetition turns superfluity and excess into glorious virtues. Overflowing with Brian Gibson's airplane-engine bass roar and distorted chants, Brian Chippendale's punching drums, and a layer of viscous distortion on top, Wonderful Rainbow is an exhausting workout. Its 10 songs loop, cycle, and repeat so rigorously your brain feels a marathon runner's burn. But each track's muscular incline eventually delivers a rewarding endorphin high. And, just to make sure their noise mantras came in different colors, Lightning Bolt slipped bits of melody inside almost every machine-like blast. The overall effect is less redundant than generous, making Wonderful Rainbow like a pot of gold at the end of another invigorating sky-ride.

156. Bloc Party
Silent Alarm
[Wichita/V2; 2005]

What a dumb name for this album. Press play and the first sound you hear is a siren-like blare of an open E string announcing with all the subtlety of Funkmaster Flex that SHIT'S ABOUT TO GO DOWN. By the start of 2005, much of the previous year's optimism and stridency gave way to seriously bummed indifference, but Bloc Party wasn't havin' it. Kele Okereke is half Paul Revere, half Bono over fighting-trim tracks that stood out as rhythmically vital and melodically sharp even as it seemed like every new hyped band was getting up for the downstroke. But beyond that, what makes Silent Alarm rise above is the depth of Bloc Party's passion-- the precedents for their high-wire musicianship were easy to spot, but then again, while Gang of Four wouldn't sniff at "Price of Gas", their "love" song was "Anthrax", not "Blue Light" and "So Here We Are". Future releases would prove this point more obviously, but on Silent Alarm, Bloc Party was a clenched fist looking for another hand to hold.

155. Clipse
Lord Willin'
[Star Trak; 2002]

It's true that the Thornton Brothers took a great leap after them crackers at Jive stopped playing fair. But during their Arista years, Pusha and Malice seemed to be doing just fine. With the Neptunes as their guardian angels, the Virginia duo did more than just talk dope deals. They had fun on the weekends ("When the Last Time"), they stunted on other rappers ("I'm Not You"), and they built an elegiac shrine to their homestate ("Virginia"). The drugs still mattered, though. To this day there are thousands of people who don't know what "Grindin'" is about, despite the fact that it is one of the most explicitly told songs ever. Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo in their prime had that effect. After all their misguided evolutions, it's hard to describe the Neptunes in their prime. Adventurous but ruthlessly commercial; rap purists that broke every rule; futurists with a healthy sense of nostalgia. Together the two duos made a jarring, indelible sound. Just don't call it coke rap.

154. Ghostface Killah
The Pretty Toney Album
[Def Jam; 2004]

Ghostface Killah is the preeminent grown-ass man of contemporary hip-hop. What's truly amazing about the artistic evolution of Tony Starks is how he's managed to become a wise, world-weary vet without turning into a bitter old crank, pining futilely for the return of some utterly extinct Golden Age. The crazy-quilt headfuck Supreme Clientele may be most folks' favorite Ghost record of the decade, but personally I'm more compelled by the lived-in contradictions of The Pretty Toney Album, which gives you Ghost spitting brilliant nonsense about 30 dollar bills and seeing the ocean in "my man's wave," but also Dennis Coles stinking up bathrooms and affirming that "my boots hang over the telephone wires on Broad." Ghost spends most of the record sounding harried-- by the cops ("Run"), by an ungrateful boo ("Tooken Back"), even by "the two minute and 37 second clock" ("Beat the Clock"). Like most of us, he finds one of his few forms of solace in music, in Ghost's case the warm, loving soul and R&B of dusty legends like Esther Phillips and the Delfonics.

153. Jens Lekman
Night Falls Over Kortedala
[Service/Secretly Canadian; 2007]

From those early days when people thought his name was Rocky Dennis, Jens Lekman has cultivated an impression of complete sincerity at the same time he has remained as ultimately unknowable as Sally Shapiro; he'll murmur sweet nothings too good to check, play at your neighbor's house, then move to Australia and drop off the face of the internet. But first, Night Falls Over Kortedala. Nominally a withdrawal into Lekman's most provincial fantasies, Kortedala lets insularity become a Trojan horse for globalization-- after all, Gothenburg is a place where national indie-pop heroes argue over tennis about Christina Aguilera remixes. So Lekman's sweet, unposturing songs about first kisses, sublime haircuts, out-of-office replies, avocado-related mishaps and asthma inhalers travel the Earth, using first-class samples when Lekman can't fly somewhere himself (not even on the red prop plane from the video). Good advice that won't get you rich: "The best way to touch your heart is to make an ass of myself." It feels true, doesn't it?

152. Cannibal Ox
The Cold Vein
[Definitive Jux; 2001]

Before Vordul and Vast Aire broke through, underground hip-hop maintained a line between scientific abstract battlers and real-talk street-rap practitioners-- it was a fine one, but few outside Shaolin made a habit of crossing it. With The Cold Vein, Can Ox overstepped that line, straddled it, erased it: pissy project-housing elevators and corner bodegas became Jack Kirby battlegrounds, mathematics were dismantled and reassembled into bleak statistical proofs ("Life is mean/ And death is the median/ And Purgatory is the mode that we settle in"), pigeons turned phoenix, and the combination of Vast's sociopath-cadence wordplay and Vordul's relentless internal rhymes turned their lyrics into razors that could cut you sure as any twitchy stick-up kid could. That they still had the capability for indelible love songs (to women in "The F-Word"; to hip hop in "A B-Boy's Alpha") magnified their humanity; that they spit every syllable over the majestic, rust-covered doom of peak-power El-P reinforced their legend.

151. The Walkmen
Bows and Arrows
[Record Collection; 2004]

When lead singer Hamilton Leithauser first enters the stage on Bows and Arrows, he is being thrown out of a bar. "You don't have to say it again, cuz I heard you the first time," he mutters petulantly-- except he croons the line, letting his shit-eating grin seep into the sound until it turns into a sweet nothing. That's quite a trick, and of all the bratty New York rock bands that broke through in the early 00s, no one walked this razor-thin line separating sensitivity and callowness quite as deftly as the Walkmen. Leithauser, his warm rasp making him come across like a more emotionally unstable young Rod Stewart, lurches from messy confrontations to moments of disarming empathy, and on "The Rat", he lays himself completely bare, pleading for recognition with an abandon that is still startling, as his normally bleary-eyed bar-rock band explodes into catharsis all around him. There weren't many portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-fuck-up albums this decade that brimmed with as much wit, regret, and wry honesty.