Pitchfork is Asking Readers for Their Top 25 Albums of the Past 25 Years. Here's My List.
"For a minute there, I lost myself"
The music website Pitchfork is turning 25-years-old this year. Founded by record store employee Ryan Schreiber in Minneapolis, the publication initially focused on the indie rock scene but has since expanded to cover genres as disparate as rap, country, jazz, and electronica. Pitchfork usually publishes four new album reviews each day during the work-week along with a Sunday retrospective review as well as extensive end-of-year best-of lists in December. About ten to fifteen years ago it supplanted Rolling Stone as the nation’s preeminent source for pop music news and criticism.
To celebrate its birthday, Pitchfork is asking its readers to rank and submit their picks for the best twenty-five albums of the past twenty-five years. It may seem rather arbitrary to treat 1996 as a musical Year Zero, but it’s actually as good a year as any to start. Alternative rock, which had exploded in popularity in 1991 with the release of Nevermind by Nirvana, reached its apotheosis on Beck’s Odelay just a month after Pitchfork went online. Britpop—which culminated in the “battle” between Oasis and Blur in 1995—peaked around that time and then experienced a speedy decline; the Spice Girls would fill the breach. Rap was also changing. With the deaths of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. in 1996 and 1997, gangsta rap was giving way to the rap mogul era, exemplified first by Puff Daddy and then Jay-Z, while the neo-soul/alternative rap movement that gangsta rap had marginalized earlier in the decade secured its place on the charts with the Fugees’ The Score. The center of the hip-hop world was beginning to shift, too, with Atlanta’s OutKast hailing the emergence of southern rap. Multiple electronic music subcultures were playing themselves out in England, but Big Beat was right around the corner. So was the TRL tween-pop of Britney Spears and NSYNC, as well as indie rock / punk renaissance bands like the Strokes and the White Stripes.
It’s also important to note the obvious, which is that Pitchfork is a website. Pitchfork was a very early part of the music world’s shift from physical recordings and the physical publications that reviewed them to the digital online universe we now take for granted. It would take a few years for this transformation to take hold—Napster appeared in 1999, iPods became popular in 2004, YouTube blew up in 2006—but Pitchfork, as a species indigenous to this online ecosystem, has always been more at home chronicling this tumultuous musical era than legacy publications. Therefore, picking the best twenty-five albums of the past twenty-five years is almost akin to picking the best records of the digital age. (It is interesting, though, that Pitchfork has focused on albums rather than songs. Yes, Pitchfork is known for its album reviews, but in the streaming era, the focus of the music industry and the music audience has shifted away from long players to individual songs. That doesn’t mean there aren’t great albums being released today, but it does maybe suggest that even Pitchfork is slipping behind the times here.)
So what are those twenty-five albums? When Pitchfork publishes its list—which will run to a whopping 200 albums like their big past best-of lists—it will probably come close to defining the canon. They’re not asking us for the canon, though; they just want our faves. Consequently, while any canonical list of the best albums since 1996 would have to include Is This It by the Strokes or The Blueprint by Jay-Z, they won’t crack my personal list.
The toughest challenge for me in making this list is distinguishing between “favorite” and “best” albums. Pitchfork isn’t really clear about what they’re looking for from readers here, as they use both words interchangeably. There’s a distinction, though, between an album of unsurpassed musical quality and excellence (the best) and an album someone prefers listening to (a favorite). In some ways, it’s the difference between eating your vegetables and indulging in dessert.
Some may argue the ideas of “favorite” and “best” actually are synonymous with one another, that they prefer listening to high quality music. To a large extent that’s true; a listener’s favorite album will probably contain qualities they find excellent. After years of listening to pop music, however, I don’t want to limit myself only to albums I can rationalize as great. I want to be able to simply enjoy them too (although I am not making the production of joy a requirement either.)
I guess when it comes to making a list of my “favorite”/“best” albums, I’m picking the records that reliably sweep me away every time I listen to them. My admiration for them runs deep and across many levels—intellectual, emotional, spiritual, musical, and just plain old delightful. If you asked me why I liked any of these albums, I could supply you with an essay. Or maybe I’d hand you a piece of paper with the words “It just sounds great” scrawled across the top of it. In the context of this undertaking, they mean the same thing.
My list:
1. OK Computer • Radiohead (1997)
2. Brighter Than Creation’s Dark • Drive-By Truckers (2008)
3. Magic • Bruce Springsteen (2007)
4. Wrecking Ball • Bruce Springsteen (2012)
5. Kala • M.I.A. (2007)
6. Neon Bible • Arcade Fire (2007)
7. American Idiot • Green Day (2004)
8. Hot Fuss • The Killers (2004)
9. Heartthrob • Tegan and Sara (2013)
10. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy • Kanye West (2010)
11. Asking for Flowers • Kathleen Edwards (2008)
12. A Rush of Blood to the Head • Coldplay (2002)
13. It’s Blitz • Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2009)
14. Car Wheels on a Gravel Road • Lucinda Williams (1998)
15. Days Are Gone • Haim (2013)
16. The ArchAndroid • Janelle Monáe (2010)
17. Same Trailer Different Park • Kacey Musgraves (2013)
18. African Giant • Burna Boy (2019)
19. 808s and Heartbreak • Kanye West (2008)
20. Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea • PJ Harvey (2000)
21. Anti • Rihanna (2016)
22. The Weight of These Wings • Miranda Lambert (2016)
23. Ultraviolence • Lana Del Rey (2014)
24. Lemonade • Beyoncé (2016)
25. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill • Lauryn Hill (1998) / Blackstar • David Bowie (2016)
My number one album—OK Computer by Radiohead—is also the oldest album on my list. Picking it for the top spot wasn’t hard at all; it would easily make my list of top ten albums of all-time. I suspect when Pitchfork’s final list comes out, either OK Computer or its follow-up, Kid A, will land at number one; I much prefer OK Computer because it’s more melodic, more sonically cohesive, and less esoteric. That doesn’t necessarily make it an easy listen. It’s a haunting and at times scary album about alienation in an increasingly technological world. The album still feels prescient and hasn’t seemed to age at all. What I appreciated listening to OK Computer this time around is the way the characters on the album inhabit the songs, which buzz and pop and grind and drone on around them. These characters may be at the mercy of technology, but they remain souls enmeshed in flesh. More than a great record, it’s one of the essential works of art of the post-Cold War age of globalization.
My number two album, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark by the alternative country/Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers, couldn’t be further in style from Radiohead. I stumbled onto this album after reading a rave end-of-year review by Robert Christgau, so I can’t claim to have discovered it on my own, but my appreciation for it grows by the year. It’s basically an album of Southern gothic short stories rooted in the late 00s. The songs tackle the War in Iraq and PTSD, conservative Christian hypocrisy, closeted life in rural America, and the meth epidemic, but also little slices of life hinting at the quiet desperation of Americans on the verge of the Great Recession. With Jason Isbell out of the band by this point, Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood are the primary vocalists and songwriters here, but the album’s saving grace are the contributions made by Isbell’s ex-wife Shonna Tucker. (Spooner Oldham plays keyboards as well.) At nineteen tracks, this is the sort of album that has its own geography. It’s hard to pick out a favorite song— “3 Dimes Down”, “The Righteous Path”, “The Opening Act”, “The Purgatory Line”, “Goode’s Field Road”, “A Ghost to Most”—but you’d be hard-pressed to find a more beautiful album ender on any record than “The Monument Valley”. I’m just going to drop these lyrics here:
It's all about where you put the horizon
Said the Great John Ford to the young man rising
You got to frame it just right and have some luck of course
And it helps to have a tall man sitting on the horse
Tell them just enough to still leave them some mystery
A grasp of the ironic nature of history
A man turns his back on the comforts of home
The Monument Valley to ride off aloneAnd when the dust all settles and the story is told
History is made by the side of the road
By the men and women that can persevere
And rage through the storm, no matter how severe
And whether it's a horse or a car or a train
There's gonna be some fine times and there's gonna be some pain
In the end it's a silhouette framed by the sun
And just The Monument Valley when the evening comesIt's a strong wind blowing on the open range
It's gonna be beautiful and it's gonna be strange
It's where to plant the camera and when to say action
When to print the legend and when to leave the facts in
And when to turn your back on the comforts of home
And wander round The Monument Valley alone
I can make the case that Bruce Springsteen is the only member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who could be inducted again based solely on his post-induction work. (He made it to the Hall in 1999.) In that time, he also became an honored voice in the American public sphere, cashing in his credibility with working class and progressive Americans to comment on the War in Iraq, the 2004 election, the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, economic inequality, and the Black Lives Matter movement. I put what I think are his two best albums from that era—Magic and Wrecking Ball, which survey the damage wrought by the George W. Bush administration and the Great Recession, respectively—at #3 and #4 on my list. Accuse me of bias, but these albums are the reason I’m biased, and I don’t think I’d be honest with you if I stashed them somewhere in the mid-teens or tried to distinguish the two.
The other artist who made the list twice was Kanye West. He’s become harder for me to listen to over these past five years as his politics have cast his music in a new light, but I think 808s and Heartbreak and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy can still stand on their own. 808s deals with unbridled yet unfulfilling freedom, a theme shared with nothing less than The Great Gatsby and Citizen Kane. That’s pretty good company. Fantasy is an album about the glass floor and how Black men are never allowed to sink as low as White men before facing social reprobation. Donald Trump proved that. Unfortunately, I think West saw in Trump a kind of vehicle for the liberation he sought and ended up degrading his art.
I remember standing in a record store and hearing two albums come across the PA system that led me to ask the store clerk who they were playing. The first was A Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay; it happened twice in the same day at two different stores, at which point I figured I should just buy the album. Coldplay has released some fairly lukewarm music over the years—sometimes I wonder if they’ll be remembered as the 00s version of 80s-era Genesis rather than the second coming of prime-era U2—but I stand by A Rush of Blood…. The other album was M.I.A.’s Kala, which sounds like a mash-up of music you would hear at an international market. I remember thinking at the time that this was the future of pop music, but no one’s caught up to M.I.A. yet. I still expect that someday we’ll look back on her as a Robert Johnson-type figure. (For a less eclectic but still exciting blend of musical diasporas, check out the Afro-Caribbean/American R&B/hip-hop of Rihanna’s Anti and Burna Boy’s African Giant, an Afrobeats album recorded at the intersection of Nigeria, Jamaica, and London.)
Most people who would include an Arcade Fire album on their list would probably choose either Funeral or The Suburbs, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Neon Bible, which asks what we an individuals are supposed to do when we’re caught in an apocalyptic crossfire. I’m also fond of Green Day’s American Idiot, one of the few albums of its era to thumb its nose at the Bush administration; it’s also a rousing takedown of apathy. Earlier this week I was out and about and heard “Somebody Told Me” by the Killers, reminding me of just how great that album is from start to finish. The Killers never quite lived up to their potential, but it’s always hard to top a perfect first record like Hot Fuss. And although it wasn’t their last album, It’s Blitz by Yeah Yeah Yeahs sounds to me like the last rock and roll record, its guitars turning into synths as punk and post-punk and synth-pop ascend together into heaven.
If you like synth-pop, don’t miss Heartthrob by Tegan and Sara. The best pure pop album on this list, it sounds like the soundtrack to a long-lost John Hughes film. Or if you dig retro sounds, check out Days Are Gone by Haim, which channels Fleetwood Mac and late-70s Eagles. Fans of folk, Americana, and country will find four albums by four women on my list. Asking for Flowers by Kathleen Edwards is an overlooked gem; like fellow Canadian Neil Young, Edwards does not possess a great voice, but she uses it to wonderful effect to lend strength to vulnerable and abused characters. Kacey Musgraves sounds like Tom Bodett leaving the light on for you on Same Trailer Different Park. She’s the girl rolling her eyes at small town life as she smokes a joint during a break from work, but she also brings a cheery Willie Nelson/Dolly Parton disposition to her music that embraces those who traditionally may not have felt welcomed within the circle of country music. Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is a wounded travelogue of Louisiana, while the lo-fi buzz of The Weight of These Wings picks up the shattered pieces of Miranda Lambert’s life following her divorce.
PJ Harvey’s Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is a punk noir masterpiece, while Ultraviolence by Lana Del Rey draws on bluesy 50s noir tones to eviscerate haute bourgeois America. The ArchAndroid by Janelle Monáe is an exciting sci-fi soul/hip-hop cycle highlighted by the retro-pop Obama-era anthem “Tightrope.” (“‘Cause baby whether you’re high or low/ Whether you’re high or low/ You gotta tip on the tightrope”) No list would be complete without something by Beyoncé; I chose Lemonade, which concludes with perhaps the best song of the past decade, “Formation.” As for the last album on my list, I’m still choosing between Lauryn Hill’s neo-soul classic and David Bowie’s final words, although I may be inclined to go with Hill simply because her album is the older one and the work Pitchfork’s current readers are more likely to overlook.
So that’s my list. While I couldn’t squeeze in the White Stripes, OutKast, Bob Dylan, Wilco, or Kendrick Lamar, that’s OK, because the albums I chose are still the ones I lean on when I’m searching for musical satisfaction. It’s hard to imagine spending the next twenty-five years without them.
You can submit your picks for your top albums of the past twenty-five years by clicking here. Voting closes on August 20. I’ll link to the full list once they post it.
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Exit music: “Exit Music (For a Film)” by Radiohead (1997, OK Computer)