top 20 albums of the decade

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20 Best Albums of the Decade

By: James Smith

I spent some time thinking about my favorite albums over the last ten years. There’s a fair amount of personal bias and few major players in the music game kind of got screwed simply because I’m not the biggest fan (sorry Jack White) but if you haven’t listened to any of these albums I’d really recommend you give a few of them a try.

20 Fleet Foxes-Fleet Foxes

The most noticeable feature of this album is the incredible ability of every member of the band to harmonize together creating a beautiful sound. Upon further listening though it isn’t the vocals as much as the song writing that really makes Fleet Foxes debut album into a classic. The songs are almost poppy at points with upbeat hooks layered with background vocals and the lyrics themselves are absolutely on point.

19. RJD2-Deadringer

Hipsters, we’ve finally found a DJ you can dance to! Dark electronic beats with a swing and jazz influence behind it makes this sound unique. The CD is insanity in musical form combining heavy bass lines and mysterious synths with vocal samples that are just eerie.

18. Coldplay-A Rush of Blood to the Head

Yes, we can all agree that Coldplay is gay. But long before the days of overproduced albums and ridiculous onstage theatrics the band released a pretty fucking good album. The difference between this and their later albums is they never come across as trying too hard, in fact at parts they have songs that seem to take away from its potential popularity (God Put a Smile on Your Face) but it was moves like that that made this a classic.

17 The Gray Album-Danger Mouse

I don’t this anyone saw this one coming. Some unknown producer took the most famous CD in the world and mixed it with the most famous band of all time. The Gray Album made the remix cool and showed that there’s a major creative aspect behind it. Sense then dozens of attempts have been made to recreate the concept but none will have near the same impact.

16 Common Market-Common Market

I’ll be the first to admit that this complete personal bias, with that being said, this album is fucking dope. It is beat master Sabzi’s best work to date and most likely ever (why do producers always get so overcomplicated?). But it isn’t the insane beats or prefect flow of RA Scion that make this album so memorable. It’s the lyrics. Its easy to listen to album this smooth on cruse control and not pay attention to the words, but in doing that you miss on a powerful message of love and revolution.

15 Bon Iver-For Emma, Forever Ago

When singer/songwriter Justin Vernon wrote and recorded For Emma, Forever Ago he locked himself in a log cabin in northern Wisconsin for three months and that’s pretty much exactly what this album sounds like. It’s not a sad album, as much as it is moving. Catchy enough so it gets stuck in your head but passive enough that you can’t remember which song your singing.

14 The Postal Service-Give Up

Not only do I think the concept for this album is fucking awesome (for those of you that don’t know the name “The Postal Service” comes from the frequent mailings of beats and vocals back and forth between Ben Gibbard in Seattle and Jimmy Tamborello in LA) but the it sounds like nothing anyone had ever created, a mixture of electronic/pop/spacey music. Gibbard’s vocals are perfect, his lyrics are thought provoking and the production is completely on point.

13 Murs and 9th Wonder-3:16 The 9th Edition

I remember the first time I saw Murs perform, it was at a huge hip-hop festival outside of LA. Murs was supposed to perform on a side stage but when Nas no showed he rolled over on a golf cart with a burned CD of beats and no DJ. He stood up in fount of 40,000 people expecting to see Nas, acted as his own DJ and fucking killed it. At the end of the show he declared “I don’t care what anyone says, I’m greatest fucking rapper in California….Murs for President” and then he slammed the mic to the ground. Well in all fairness, when you release an album this good it’s hard to not think you’re the shit. The last underground rapper that doesn’t actually suck met up with best producer in hip hop (who said that…) and created a classic about how there’s more to being a black rapper from California then guns and money (buts that’s important too).

12 MGMT-Oracular Spectacular

When you get past all the hipsters with Kids on replay, all the dance remixes being played in Hollisters across the nation and the unmanageable amounts of hype this band got in such a short amount of time, there’s an amazing album behind it. What makes this album isn’t the singles (even though they are catchy and fun) it’s the depth start to finish, the lyrics and the diversity….and having Dave Firdman as the producer (Flaming Lips) didn’t hurt either.

11 Eminem-The Marshall Mathers LP

When Eminem first hit the scene with Infinite not many people noticed, when he followed it up with The Slim Shady LP wiggers, sick fucks, and women’s rights groups paid attention. By the time his third album, The Marshall Mathers LP, appeared pretty much everyone had some opinion on the white guy from Detroit. The album is extremely diverse to say the least but throughout the pop hits (Real Slim Shady) and Raw Violence (Kim) he maintains the cutting rhymes that made him so famous.

10 Modest Mouse-The Mood & Antarctica

Years ago when I first heard “Float On” I thought I’d give some more Modest Mouse a try so I picked up this album and gave it a spin. It was kind of like giving a sip of beer to a nine year old…I hated it, and I didn’t get what the older kids were talking about. Years later my opinions have changed on both Modest Mouse and Beer. What it lacks in catchy hooks it makes up for in powerful lyrics and carries a grungy indie sound that only Modest Mouse could pull off.

9 The Flaming Lips-Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

It’s hard to believe this was the Flaming Lips’ 10th album. After nine previous albums they still possessed the creativity to redefine the band and release a brand new sound. The mixture of guitars, spacey synths and off the wall vocals brought psychedelic rock into the 21st Century and created the image the lips have been riding ever since.

8 The National-Boxer

It may be true that you have to be 35, lonely, and living in New York City to fully appreciate this album but I must say since the first time I heard “Fake Empire” I’ve been a massive fan. The brilliance of this album comes in the soft piano and steady drums which define every track, that and Matt Berninger’s deep deep voice. Start to finish it all comes together and paints an image of a life that wishes it was still young but is a long ways from admitting it’s growing old.

7 Radiohead-In Rainbows

This placement had nothing to do with the album’s distribution method (which was brilliant) it’s just a really good album. On first listen I wasn’t sure if I even enjoyed it but never have I heard an album that grew on me so much. To say the musical style is ambitious is a massive understatement but then again when has Radiohead ever played it safe? Heavy layering’s combined with York’s vocals that take on the form of an instrument are a brilliant mixture.

6 LCD Soundsystem-Sound of Silver

Every so often a band comes along that has the talent to throw about 80 million ideas into one album and not have it shit. LCD Soundsystem was talented (or lucky) enough to make it sounds brilliant. Every song sounds so distinctly different but still brings the poppy bass lines and powerful development, except for “New York I love You, But Your Bringing Me Down” I have no idea where that came from.

5 Beck-Sea Change

I’ve always thought of Beck as a modern day David Bowie, not afraid to try anything musically or really just anything in general. This was one of the first albums I’ve ever owned and because of that I’ve listened to it countless times. Not only is there not a single weak track but also for such an overdone concept (a break up album) it never looses its freshness. It’s sad, it’s happy, it’s hopeful, it’s discouraging but mostly it’s real.

4 Arcade Fire-The Funeral

For music the 2000s were about three things banging beats (see below), pop stars and the rise of the indie band. Arcade Fire came out of nowhere to release a worldwide album on a little known record label (Merge). It took new ideas (the addition of string instruments) and mixed them with rock staples (lyrics about growing up). Ultimately what emerged was the face of indie rock and path for countless other bands follow.

3 Jay Z-The Blueprint

The Blueprint marks the first time in the history of hip-hop that the producer was more important then the rapper. Modern rap music lives and dies with the producer. Its no coincidence that both “Lollipop” and “Whatever You Like” were the only songs anyone will remember from “The Paper Trail” and “The Carter 3” (producer Jim Jonsin). Jay put together an all-star lineup of producers (Just Blaze, Timberland, and some no name named Kanye West) and did exactly what he had to make hits. He’s not as sharp on this as he was Reasonable Doubt but it will forever be remembered as his greatest album because it defined what modern rap music would become.

2 Radiohead-Kid A

At the beginning of the decade Radiohead was in a very strange place. They had just released the greatest modern rock album of all time and had the daunting task of following it up. Where most bands would play it safe and attempt to imitate their past success Radiohead recreated their sound and released an album that was damn near in a new genre. It mixed rock music with electronic music and tossed out the traditional idea of what a rock song was. What was left was complete brilliance and a stunning album.

1 Sigur Ros-Agaetis Byrjun

Back in the 90s people began to worry who would be the next U2, and then Radiohead came along and people stopped worrying so much, than in 2000s people got really scared and started to wonder who was going to be the next Radiohead and then came Sigur Ros. This album is a piece of art that cannot be listened to track by track but instead as a whole. It created its own genre that no one else is talented enough to be apart of. The album is a mixture of rock band, and symphony, and DJ all wrapped together to create a masterpiece.