A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
Instead of providing an extended list for 1993, I rag on a number of critical favorites from the year. I’ve mellowed out about Björk’s Debut and U2’s Zooropa, but Siamese Dream and janet. are still overrated.
Duran Duran, The Wedding Album
Bill Frisell, Have a Little Faith
John Zorn / Naked City, Absinthe
Judy Dunaway and the Evan Gallagher Little Band, Judy Dunaway and the Evan Gallagher Little Band
Spiny Norman, Crust
The Love Gods, Hujja Hujja Fishla
Michael Nyman, The Piano
Wayne Horvitz / Pigpen, Halfrack
Clannad, Banba
Emerson Sting Quartet, American Originals: Ives / Barber String Quartets
Other favorites from the year:
Kate Bush, The Red Shoes
Emmylou Harris, Cowgirl’s Prayer
Wu-Tang Clan, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
Cypress Hill, Black Sunday
Digable Planets, Reachin’
U2, Zooropa
Julee Cruise, The Voice of Love
Sting, Ten Summoner’s Tales
This time, I’m providing an extended list, and it demonstrates where I was as a listener and where I am.
That Favorite 10 is stuffed to the gills with some really avant-garde titles, the kind put together by a young person trying to be more cosmopolitan than his peers.
The extended list includes music that would have been ignored by the person who compiled the Favorite 10.
My younger self would have scoffed at my older present self for deigning to include hip-hop, and my older self would tell my younger self to examine what social pressures may be coming to bear for his opposition.
Younger self would complain about how hip-hop culture is fetishized by his ethnic cohorts, which older self would acknowledge but caution against succumbing to the racial dynamics of the country.
Younger self would have no idea what older self would be talking about, since younger self hadn’t yet moved to he Mainland US to see these dynamics in action.
All that to say maybe I’ve been resistant to hip-hop because the music that most appeals to me is made predominantly by upper middle class white men.
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
I had trouble coming up with a Favorite 10 of 1995, so I left it at nine. I’ve since had time to fill the remaining spot with an album I shouldn’t have let go.
Emmylou Harris, Wrecking Ball
The Klezmatics, Jews with Horns
John Zorn/Masada, Hei
Värttinä, Aitara
Björk, Post
Enya, The Memory of Trees
Kronos Quartet, Performs Philip Glass
Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill
Tears for Fears, Raoul and the Kings of Spain
Tracy Chapman, New Beginning
Other favorites from the year:
Prince, The Gold Experience
Bang on a Can All-Stars, Industry
Janet Jackson, Design of a Decade, 1986-1996
Fugazi, Red Medicine
Radiohead, The Bends
Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Brainbloodvolume
John Zorn, Elegy and Kristallnacht
A year-end list at the time would have included Tracy Chapman, but New Beginning got cut in purge before the original list was compiled. It took the discovery of her second album, Crossroads, for me to revisit New Beginning and realizing what a mistake I’d made.
The Gold Experience is a surprising entry in the extended list. The era when Prince was known by the Love Symbol was a creatively fraught time, so it overshadows just how good The Gold Experience is.
I’ve attempted to explore Radiohead in the past few years to understand my general ambivalence to them. So far, The Bends is the only album I really like, which is of course an obvious choice. Modern classical musicians all seem to love them, which surprises me. Café Tacuba does far more interesting work.
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
1996 was my final year in college, a year before I would earn the kind of disposable income that would go into building a music collection. While the Favorite 10 of 1996 remains mostly unchanged, the extended list includes many more discoveries I couldn’t afford to hear at the time.
Soundtrack, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet
Värttinä, Kokko
Soundtrack, Robotech Perfect Collection
Asylum Street Spankers, Spanks for the Memories
Various Composers, Gay American Composers
Original Cast Recording, Rent
Marilyn Manson, Antichrist Superstar
Everything But the Girl, Walking Wounded
Shawn Colvin, A Few Small Repairs
Robin Holcomb, Little Three
Other favorites from the year:
Midnight Oil, Breathe
Dead Can Dance, Spiritchaser
Emmylou Harris, Portraits
Kronos Quartet, Howl USA
UA, 11
Yen Town Band, Montage
Neutral Milk Hotel, On Avery Island
Aphex Twin, Richard D. James Album
Weezer, Pinkerton
Sleater-Kinney, Call the Doctor
Clannad, Lore
Café Tacuba, Avalancha de Exitos
I could actually add more titles from Wilco, Helmet, Gillian Welch, DJ Shadow and Amuro Namie to the extended list, but I haven’t lived with them as long as the ones I’ve already added.
I owned the Richard D. James album at one point. It was a promo from the student newspaper, but I was such a neophyte with EDM that I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. As it turns out nobody could really make heads or tails of it.
The original extended list didn’t include Lore because it had already fallen victim to a collection purge. I rediscovered the album after the death of Padraig Duggan.
Avalancha de Exitos was the first album by Café Tacuba I would encounter, but I wouldn’t purchase it till many years later. I borrowed it from a friend and liked it. But I stayed away from it because it’s a cover album of music of which I had no reference.
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
I’m flabbergasted by the idea that, as of this writing, the year 2000 is nearly 20 years ago. As much as I lionize the music I heard in high school, the music of my late 20s has been incredibly influential, perhaps professionally as well as personally. Thus, we don’t see much change from the original list.
Shiina Ringo, Shouso Strip
Cocco, Rapunzel
NUMBER GIRL, SAPPUKEI
SUPERCAR, Futurama
eX-Girl, Big When Far, Small When Close
Sleater-Kinney, All Hands on the Bad One
Idlewild, 100 Broken Windows
FEED, Make Every Stardust Shimmer!
Tomosaka Rie, “Shoujo Robot”
Sade, Lovers Rock
Other favorites from the year:
Do As Infinity, Break of Dawn
Yaida Hitomi, daiya-monde
PJ Harvey, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
OBLIVION DUST, Butterfly Head
At the Drive-In, Relationship of Command
L’Arc~en~Ciel, REAL
Bonnie Pink, Let Go
MISSILE GIRL SCOOT, Fiesta!
Smashing Pumpkins, MACHINA/The Machine of God
m-flo, Planet Shining
Juanes, Fíate Bien
Emmylou Harris, Red Dirt Girl
U2, All That You Can’t Leave Behind
La Ley, Uno
Sinéad O’Connor, Faith and Courage
Soundtrack, High Fidelity
BBMak, Sooner or Later
At the time of its release, I was just glad All That You Can’t Leave Behind was not a continuation of Pop. The recent vinyl reissue of the album, unfortunately, reveals its shortcomings. Thus, it loses its original ranking in the Favorite 10.
Plot twist: I panned 2004’s How to Build an Atomic Bomb, but that album has endured far better than All That You Can’t Leave Behind. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Idlewild’s 1000 Broken Windows takes the spot vacated by U2.
Do As Infinity probably could have held onto its place in the Favorite 10 on the strength of “Raven” alone. At the time, most J-Pop I had encountered relied heavily on keyboards and drum machines, so a karaoke-ready band with crunchy guitars felt novel to me.
I can’t say I love Break of Dawn as much now. It’s rare that singles displace albums for the Favorite 10, but all three tracks on “Shoujo Robot” hint at an awesome album I wish Shiina Ringo and Tomosaka Rie recorded.
The extended list is really just all the titles that could have legitimately competed for that bottom spot on the Favorite 10.
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
Back in February, I argued 2002 was an important year in music of the 2000s. 2003 is no slouch in that regard either. The list from that year sees no major changes.
Shiina Ringo, Karuki Zaamen Kuri no Hana
ACO, Irony
Molotov, Dance and Dense Denso
Café Tacuba, Cuatro Caminos
ART-SCHOOL, LOVE/HATE
Sasagawa Miwa, Jijitsu
bloodthirsty butchers, Kouya ni Okeru bloodthirsty butchers
Bonnie Pink, Present
downy, untitled third album
Explosions in the Sky, The Earth Is Not a Cold, Dead Place
Other favorites from the year:
Outkast, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Death Cab for Cutie, Transatlanticism
Bleach, Bleach
The Postal Service, Give Up
NUMBER GIRL, Sapporo OMOIDE IN MY HEAD Joutai
Onitsuka Chihiro, Sugar High
Original Cast Recording, Avenue Q
Emmylou Harris, Stumble Into Grace
NIRGILIS, Tennis
Rufus Wainwright, Want One
Hayashi Asuca, Saki
Caitlin Cary, I’m Staying Out
The Bad Plus, These Are the Vistas
DJ Krush, Shinsou ~Message from the Depth~
Benjamin Gibbard / Andrew Kenny, Home, Vol. 5
The Wrens, The Meadowlands
Longwave, The Strangest Things
The only change is switching out Explosions in the Sky for Outkast, and the extended list adds the Wrens and Longwave.
I was working at Waterloo Records in 2003, and legitimate download services hadn’t gotten off the ground yet to stem the tide of rampant file sharing. So I was discovering a lot of great music through word of mouth and on the job.
While I’ve added a number of 2003 titles to my collection in the following years, few have edged their way into this already crowded field.
So I guess I’m pretty set where 2003 is concerned.
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
The Favorite Edition 2008 spurred this exercise to revisit lists from 10 years ago. While the Favorite 10 has only one change, the other favorites include a number of new discoveries.
Santigold, Santigold
MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS, MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS
The Magnetic Fields, Distortion
Emmylou Harris, All I Intended to Be
ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION, World World World
Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
Sam Amidon, All Is Well
Leo Imai, Fix Neon
Nico Muhly, Mothertongue
Spangle call Lilli line, ISOLATION
Other favorites from the year:
Matt Alber, Hide Nothing
ZAZEN BOYS, ZAZEN BOYS 4
Utada Hikaru, HEART STATION
Perfume, GAME
Jennifer Koh, String Poetic
Janelle Monáe, Metropolis: The Chase Suite
Chris Walla, Field Manual
It took me a year and a half to get around to Santigold. I’m not sure why I hadn’t, and I can’t remember what finally spurred me to do so. I’m just glad I did. Chris Walla, unfortunately, must make way.
Perfume, Jennifer Koh and Janelle Monáe are retroactive entries, replacing hey willpower, Bob Mould and VOLA AND THE ORIENTAL MACHINE.
I must have really been tough on Utada Hikaru’s HEART STATION — it didn’t even rank at the time.
Competition for this list was tough. Matt Alber and ZAZEN BOYS could have squeezed into the Favorite 10, and even Janet Jackson and R.E.M. turned out some decent work that year. The cup runneth over.
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
I relaunched this site in early 2014 to focus more on discovering catalog music than newer artists. As a result, I didn’t get a chance to revise the Favorite Edition 2013 list after I discovered a number of critical favorites.
Jason Isbell, Southeastern
Jarell Perry, Simple Things
Patty Griffin, Silver Bell
Sam Amidon, Bright Sunny South
James Blake, Overgrown
Sigur Rós, Kveikur
Hem, Departure and Farewell
Blood Orange, Cupid Deluxe
Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, Old Yellow Moon
LEO Imai, Made from Nothing
Other favorites from the year:
Rhye, Woman
Kanye West, Yeezus
Johnny Hates Jazz, Magnetized
TV Mania, Bored with the Internet and Prozac?
Ty Herndon, Lies I Told Myself
Res, Refried Mac
Janelle Monáe, The Electric Lady
Jason Isbell had caught my eye with the stark but stunning cover of Southeastern, but I didn’t follow up on that fascination till well into 2014. Nor did I make the connection between Blood Orange and Solange till after 2013 had passed.
Isbell and Blood Orange bumped Johnny Hates Jazz and TV Mania, while Rhye and Kanye West nearly crack the Favorite 10.
I dug The College Dropout, but West can teach Billy Corgan lessons in being insufferable. Yeezus, though, sounded like an indie rock record, so I could overlook the man and focus on the art. I wouldn’t cut him that slack nowadays.
Ty Herndon came out of the closet in 2014, and he was cute enough for me to take a listen to his greatest hits collection, This Is Ty Herndon. I ended up liking it more than I expected, mostly because I really can’t stand country radio.
Lies I Told Myself shows up on this list because it sounds way more confident than anything on This Is Ty Herndon.
I started a new job on May 21, and I’m still getting adjusted to a new routine. I’m not ready to say the hiatus has ended just yet, but I can say new entries should resume before the end of summer. Till then, here’s a preview of upcoming releases.
Emmylou Harris, Ballad of Sally Rose (Deluxe Edition), June 1
I have listened to a lot of Emmylou Harris, and I can say this album is my least favorite. But its underdog status makes me curious about what didn’t make the album. Also, the current CD pressings sound awful, and I hope the remastering rectifies that.
Clannad, Turas 1980, June 8
This live album contains songs never recorded in the studio by the band.
Utada Hikaru, Hatsukoi, June 27
In retrospect, Fantôme was something of a downer. The singles preceding the release of Hatsukoi indicate a bouncier direction. Utada comes full circle title-wise — hatsukoi is the Japanese translation of “first love”.
Guns N’ Roses, Appetite for Destruction (Deluxe Edition), June 29
This album hadn’t already received a deluxe edition treatment? I’m not shelling out for anything more than the 2-disc edition.
Leo IMAI, V L P, July 11
I really enjoyed Film Scum, and it’s too bad the full album was only available at his live shows. I look forward to this album nonetheless.
Vinyl
Anne Dudley, Anne Dudley Plays the Art of Noise, June 22
This album receives a physical release in the UK and a digital release in the US. I was impatient and got the Japanese release last year, and Dudley employs some real studio wizardry to interpret the Art of Noise acoustically.
Fishbone, The Reality of My Surroundings, July 13
Trips to Goodwill have allowed me to rediscover this band.
In fact, a whole generation of readers might find the premise a bit preposterous — a list of 10 albums with which you would want to be stranded on a desert island. You had to suspend belief that you had an infinite electrical supply and a working playback device.
Then music escaped its physical confines, and iPods allowed people to carry entire music collections with them, which today’s subscription services dwarf in terms of supply.
But the desert island disc list still makes for a good thought exercise — in this era of abundance, what would you do in a moment of scarcity? What 10 albums feel as comfortable and reliable as that old jacket or blanket?
I think it’s only in the last decade that my list has finalized.
Duran Duran, Rio
As a teenager, my desert island disc list would have probably included Duran Duran in most slots. While I would hate to leave behind The Wedding Album, Rio is pretty much the go-to album for any Duranie.
Kronos Quartet, Black Angels
The Quartet for Strings No. 8 by Dmitri Shostakovich would be my desert island classical piece — I never tire hearing it. This album introduced me to the piece, and the title work has also become essential repertoire for me.
John Zorn, Naked City
I imagine there will be many frustrating days living on a desert island, and this album would help greatly to cope with those days.
Emmylou Harris, Wrecking Ball
Growing up in Hawaii meant automatically dismissing country music. Emmylou Harris introduced me to the better stuff.
Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
I was introduced to this album in 2009, right around the time it was starting to get difficult to find something new to move me. So yeah, I was surprised myself.
Cocco, Bougainvillia
NUMBER GIRL, SCHOOL GIRL DISTORTIONAL ADDICT
Shiina Ringo, Karuki Zaamen Kuri no Hana
I feel a bit self-conscious over the fact three Japanese titles show up on this list, but given the number of really good albums that clustered around 1999-2004, it’s was tough keeping SUPERCAR, AJICO and fra-foa off the list, let alone the two Shiina Ringo albums that preceded Karuki Zaamen Kuri no Hana.
Robin Holcomb, Robin Holcomb
This album reminds me that pop songwriting doesn’t always need to be sweet.
U2, The Joshua Tree
To be honest, this album usually fights for its spot on the list with In Tua Nua’s The Long Acre.
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