Snow got me out of traveling all across this glorious state today, so I figured I would get this business started. If I tried to do this as on big list it would just be too daunting, and a few different posts gives you more reason to return. The Zero's or O's were arguably the most important decade in my musical listening growth. That is not to say it was a better decade than the 80's or 90's (though it may be in some respects), but it was the decade when people my age were making the music I loved. The Zeros were the decade in which the music that was coming out was my music, the music intended to attract my generation, and create our musical identity. There are sounds and movements that I simply couldn't get into (i.e. Animal Collective, lo-fi), but that have a very important place in the musical landscape of my generation, but not on this list. These are my favorite albums. These are the albums that I listened to over and over, and will continue to listen to over and over for the rest of my life. These are the albums that I studied for college finals to, went to my high school's prom to, got my first real job to. These are the albums that I turned to in times of great loss, both personal and national, and these are the albums that helped me make sense of all that was going on around me. These are my albums, each for different haunting and fantastic reasons. These are the albums that will elicit specific, though not always crystal clear, images of times that made me who I am. The final three years of the 90's pointed me in my musical listening direction, and The Zeros were the final destination. With no further ado, the albums that were the soundtrack of my first decade as a legal adult.
50.) Gorillaz - Demon Days
Nothing says The Zero's than a side project band of cartoons that make funky electro pop songs.
50.) Gorillaz - Demon Days
Nothing says The Zero's than a side project band of cartoons that make funky electro pop songs.
49.) Justin Timberlake - FutureSex/LoveSounds
Only the late great Michael Jackson was able to so effectively shake the boy band label like this album did for Justin Timberlake. Dance Party!
48.) Queens of the Stone Age - Rated R
Stoner rock from a time when that was exactly what I was looking for.
47.) Wale - The Mixtape About Nothing
Best mixtape in a decade when hip hop went back to it's mixtape roots. Made Wale my favorite rapper ever.
46.) Brokeback - Look at the Birds
Nothing will remind me of late late night study sessions, and last minute paper writing like this underrated Thrill Jockey release.
(Sorry no stream go to Thrill Jockey to check them out.)45.) Bruce Springsteen - The Rising
I will forever be a Boss fan, and no album of the decade better captures the post 9/11 sense of loss and hope than The Rising.
44.) PJ Harvey - Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
Harvey took the edge off for one album, and created her most beautiful and easy to listen to album.
43.) Death Cab for Cute - Transatlanticism
From the first note I am instantly transported back to the American Eagle stockroom in Owensboro, and it is a wonderful feeling.
42.) Bjork - Vespertine
One of the few 90's acts to carry over in a significant way, well at least for the first 3/4 of the decade.
41.) Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Wonderful back story, and musically expansive for the band, but just not as seminal as most would have you believe.
40.) Kanye West - College Dropout
Oh Kanye, how I wish you could go back to a time when you rapped and I didn't hate. Sorry you just can't.
39.) Bright Eyes - Lifted or the Story is in Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground
Once Conor Orbest was the emo king of the world, and then like so many of my generation (myself included) he fancied himself a cowboy and lost something.
38.) TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
Still curious to see how this band's work will age, but regardless it was very very important in it's time.
37.) The Streets - Original Pirate Material
Tony Hawk 3, Bowling, smoking, and sledding after midnight in a small town...what a weird set of images such a distinctly British and bizarre album conjures.
36.) MIA - Kala
I didn't get MIA for awhile, but I sure did get her well before Jay Z and his boys did for whatever that means.
35.) Radiohead - In Rainbows
Time will tell if the hype surrounding this album will really change the face of music distribution, but regardless Radiohead's best straight forward album in over 10 years.
34.) The Avalanches - Since I Left You
One of the few groups that I wish I could do what they do. Complex and original, without a single original note.
33.) Arcade Fire - Funeral
Amazing upon release, more moving than any thing in the decade at the time, but for me time is not being so kind on this release.
32.) The Roots - Phrenology
One of the most flawlessly executed hip hop albums of the decade. I'm still not sure how Jimmy Fallon pulled it off.
31.) My Morning Jacket - At Dawn
The first band I literally watched blowup and go "mainstream". At Dawn still stands as a prime example of everything that is currently wrong with this once promising band.
30-whatever I feel like doing coming soon.
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