The Donnybrook Writing Academy

That time has come. A decade ago we thought all the computers in the world were going to crash at the very least, or worse, become intelligent and destroy the human race as we know it. Well, like Public Enemy said almost two decades ago, “Don’t believe the hype.”

But a lot has changed. The music industry especially, maybe more than any decade since the 60’s. While the Music Industrial Complex began to crumble musicians around the world almost immediately adapted (and adopted) to Web 2.0, utilizing social sites to reach more fans than ever before possible. In turn, sites like Myspace replaced traditional marketing, distribution, paparazzi, fan club, gossip mags, even venues. Blogs then became something more than any music magazine or MTV program could have imagined, a place with continuously streaming music, videos, criticism, praise and interaction for musician and fan in kind. Obviously this has produced more flashes-in-the-pan than you can hold in your iPhone. As every new band blips onto the blogosphere radar a new subgenre sprouts around it producing ever more collaborators and imitators, and another 10 gigs of music in your aggregator. No longer can people safely confine themselves to one musical sound or genre to define who they are. Hipsters get a bad name, and deserve most of what’s said about them, but when it comes to music… Well, let’s just say, it wouldn’t be the same without them.

With so much music at our fingertips what really floated to the top at the end of the day? Which albums did you seek out after hearing in an iPod commercial? What bands did you actually pay money to go see live? What was the last analog album you acquired? And what did you miss because you were just overwhelmed with the shere amount of indie bands being heralded as the next Big Thing? [editors note: Big Things are now extinct. Don't expect to see a Big Thing in the future.]

So where does that leave us? At the beginning, of course, but first we need an ending list. A final capsule of what was so we can continue with what is. This is my time-capsule. The albums I think made a huge impact in the past ten years.

This is the second volume. The middle 20 of 60 albums I chose. You can see volume 1 (the bottom 20) here. I hope that many of these will make you nod your head in agreement but I also expect dissent by the boat loads. That’s what this whole blog thing is about, interaction. So tell me what you think.

See the list below.
Listen to the list here:
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20. Yeah Yeah Yeahs    Fever To Tell – “Maps” is the grandest American indie rock single of the decade.
19. Justin Timberlake    FutureSex / LoveSounds – “My Love” is the grandest American pop single of the decade.
18. Arctic Monkeys    Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not – “I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor” is the second greatest English indie rock single of the decade.
17. Art Brut    Bang, Bang Rock & Roll – “Modern Art/My Little Brother” is the grandest English indie rock single of the decade.
16. Bat For Lashes    Fur And Gold – “What’s A Girl To Do?” is the grandest British alternative rock single of the decade.
15. The Raveonettes    Chain Gang Of Love – “That Great Love Sound” is the grandest Danish alternative rock single of the decade.
14. Jay-Z    The Black Album – “99 Problems” is the grandest American rap single of the decade.
13. The Mountain Goats    The Sunset Tree – “This Year” is the grandest singer-songwriter (should have been a) single of the decade.
12. The Black Lips    Good Bad, Not Evil – “Bad Kids” is the grandest flower-punk single of the decade.
11. TV On The Radio    Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes – “Staring at the Sun” is the grandest experimental rock single of the decade.
10. The White Stripes    White Blood Cells – “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” is the second greatest straight-up rock single of the decade.
9. The Arcade Fire    Funeral – “Rebellion (Lies)” is grandest Canadian indie rock single of the decade.
8. M.I.A.    Kala – “Paper Planes” is the grandest hip-hop, cross-over single of the decade and one of the best songs ever made.
7. Danger Mouse    The Grey Album – Pretty much the only truly grand mashup made yet.
6. The Avalanches    Since I Left You – “Frontier Psychiatrist” is the grandest electronic single of the decade.
5. Kings Of Leon    Aha Shake Heartbreak – “The Bucket” is the grandest straight-up rock single of the decade.
4. Modest Mouse    Good News For People Who Love Bad News – “Float On” is the grandest American alternative rock single of the decade, but it should have been “Bury Me With It”.
3. Sage Francis    A Healthy Distrust – “Escape Artist” and “Sea Lion (feat. Will Oldham)” are two of the grandest alternative hip-hop (non)singles of the decade.
2. k-os    Joyful Rebellion – “Man I Used to Be” is the grandest Canadian rap single of the decade.
1. Outkast    Stankonia – “B.O.B.” is the… Ah fuck it! “B.O.B.” is the first single off of Stankonia, released Sept. 19th, 2000, barely 9 months into the 2000s. Sorry to the rest of the decade of music, but thanks for participating.

I’m not going to deny the fact that I grew up listening to hip-hop and while I have expanded my musical diet by leaps-and-bounds in the past decade, at the time this came out I still believed hip-hop was the only genre that’d be around in ten years. So yes, that might be why my #1 (as well as numbers 2 and 3) are rap albums, but don’t take it from me alone. Outkast’s fourth album has been placed on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of 500 greatest albums of all time, Time magazine’s 100 best albums of all time, and Pitchfork put it at #13 on their albums of the decade. I don’t always agree with Pitchfork but they got it right this time, going so far as to name “B.O.B.” as the single of the decade.

“B.O.B.” is an awesome fucking song, true, but this album is more than just that prophetic song. “Ms. Jackson” is easily better than “Hey Ya” even though “Hey Ya” was their first real crossover. While the South was already on the rise as far as dominating hip-hop, most southern rap sounded like No Limit Records (which is to say, shit). Stankonia, on the other hand, is most notable for its diverse musical influences. The album opens with Indian tablas and harmonium, then it hits you with a heavy electric guitar riff on “Gasoline Dreams” before turning to P-funk on the second song “So Fresh, So Clean”. There’s also gospel, (“Toilet Tisha”), samba (“Humble Mumble”) and even forecasting of much of the dance/rock crossover music to come in the rest of the decade (“B.O.B.”). This diversity was tied together by the psychedelic production, using trippy synthesizers, spacey sound effects, techno percussion, and 70s-style funk.

Maybe this album didn’t change the world and Outkast still hasn’t trully made another record together but I believe that this album is one of the last albums that plays like an album is supposed to play. That is to say, every track is seguenced in a way that it’s meant to bring you on a journey from beginning to end. There are few, if any, weak tracks on this album but to really understand that you need to listen to the full thing in one take, from the grit of “Gasoline Dreams” to the stinky funk of “Stankonia (Stanklove)”.

So that’s it. Say goodbye to the decade of hipsters. What will come next? Who knows but let’s just hope the best of the next decade isn’t Drake’s Thank Me Later.
Listen to the list here:
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Download Snobcast here.

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