Most Influential Albums Of The 2000s: The List
(This is meant as an introduction to my little Most Influential Albums project - if you’ve been reading my blog, you already know all this)
Because it’s about the end of the decade, music people and websites are starting to do ‘best of 2000s’ lists. The word ‘best’ is a funny one, and conflates two separate things: 1) the ‘importance’ of an album, how much influence it had on the music world, and the world in general and 2) what your favourites were. So I’ll avoid the word ‘best’. And maybe my favourites will come later. Instead, I am writing about the albums that influenced the new music I listened to in the 2000s.
So here’s my list. If there’s a link, it’s to a detailed blog post about the album and its influence. If there’s not, I’ll write that post soon!
Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (1998, Merge)
Jon Brion - Meaningless (2001, Straight-To-Cut-Out)
The Avalanches - Since I Left You (2000, Modular)
The Hives - Veni Vidi Vicious (2000, Burning Heart)
Bonnie Prince Billy - I See A Darkness(1999, Palace Records)
The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin (1999, Warner Bros. Records)
Radiohead - Kid A (2000, Parlophone Records)
Belle And Sebastian - If You’re Feeling Sinister (1998, Jeepster Records)
Fountains of Wayne - Welcome Interstate Managers(2003, Universal)
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2003, Nonesuch)
Feist - Let It Die (2004, Interscope)
Note that the criteria is “influenced the 2000s”, not “came out in the 2000s”. Of course, there’s a sense in which I could say that the Velvet Underground and Nico is one of the most influential records of the 2000s, because there’s a sense in which they are, but they also influenced the 70s, 80s, and 90s. These are records that influenced the 2000s, in particular. You might also notice that most of these albums seem to come from 1998-2001 - this is simply because influence takes a few years to percolate, and longer to have the vantage point of a little distance.
Note also that I do not mean that the influenced artists are wholesale copycats. I’m sure that, in some cases, the artists themselves are not aware of the influence. But I’m the music on these albums was a sort of template. Musicians might use that template for their own purposes. But, also, audiences might shoehorn musicians into the template, or see them in comparison to the template.
