Best of the Decade

I've been hemming and hawing over how to do a best of the decade list because the feat is so enormous. This decade has been my introduction to music and the majority of music that has played a part in my life, from minor mood lifts to CDs that have been on rotation every day since they came out, has come out this decade. I decided that I'm going to talk about some of my favorite albums in roughly the order that I discovered them until I get to this year (That may not necessarily be the order that they came out, so no being upset if it appears chronologically inconsistent). After that I'll post a list of my top 25 CDs (which I will have omitted from the previous posts). That seems like a fair way of doing this.


Hearts of Oak by Ted Leo + The Pharmacists I feel like Ted Leo kind of tricked me into listening to his music. At the time I first heard this CD I was buried head first in ska. Somewhere on the internet I saw the song title "Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone" and it peaked my interest. At first listen I was disappointed at the lack of upstrokes and trombones. But the song is witty and the music is catchy and powerful. I credit this band as a big part of showing me that music other than ska existed. It even had heavy political overtones so I wasn't shocked by new themes in my music. This CD is perfect for when you're up and ready to carpe the heck out of diem.

Good Health by Pretty Girls Make Graves Now that I'm older and wiser I would give this band a first listen because their name is taken from a title of a Smiths song and a Kerouac allussion. When I was blissfully unaware of the role Morrissey and an outdated literary movement would take in my speakers in future years, I just thought their name was awesome. This brand of art-punk is more organized than a lot of the stuff that is out there, but it doesn't compromise it's aggression in doing it. Seven years later, "If You Hate Your Friends, You're Not Alone" still makes me feel the exact same way it did when I was 13. I want to get in a fight at the bridge behind my middle school. The fact that it can make a frail, passive, college student want to punch something is a pretty impressive feat.

Oh, Inverted World by the Shins It'd be easy to talk about how this album was released in 2001 and has only been gaining speed since then. It'd be easy to talk about the success of "New Slang" and how it took the Shins from a band that hipsters adored to a band they claimed they never even wasted time illegally downloading. As a testament to the previous statements, I heard "New Slang" on KROQ for the first time a couple of weeks ago. That's not why this CD is great to me though, at least not specifically. This album is great because it balances naivety with a loss of the rose colored glasses, which was sort of the place I was in at the time I was first heard this CD. It's optimistic, but it's realistically optimistic.

You can probably give up on seeing any one coherent idea running through these posts. Good Health is probably an incredibly random pick to most people and Oh, Inverted World is probably the most transparent pick ever. But these are the albums that have spoken to me and stuck with me. It'd be way too easy to give Kid A and Is This It? the top two spots and call myself hip but every list of the best albums of the decade is going to do that. You can at least be encouraged by my honesty.