My Top Ten Albums: 2001

In the midst of researching this list I had myself a birthday.  I turned 32 which if you’re good at math means I had my 18th birthday in 2001.  You may have also deduced that that was when I graduated high school.  Granted 14 years after I became a legal adult I’m not entirely sure I still am one, but I’d like to think I gained some perspective from that year.

Music might not be the first thing you think of when someone mentions 2001.  In fact nearly every single one of you probably think of September 11th and the events that happened on that day.  It is one of those events that you vividly remember where you were standing, what you were doing, and every other detail about.  It also happened to occur on a Tuesday morning, and happened to be the release date of one of the greatest rap albums of all time as well as an ill advised Dream Theater live album. 

Looking back on some of the things that were popular I was amazed to find out that Janet Jackson’s “All For You” was the longest running #1 single that year, do any of you even remember that song?  One of the biggest hits of the year was also Alien Ant Farm’s cover of “Smooth Criminal”.  Odd that both of those acts managed to upstage Michael Jackson who released what would turn out to be his final album in 2001 with Invincible.  It was also a strange alternate reality when Ja Rule was relevant, Crazy Town existed, and people didn’t yet know just how bad Nickelback could be. 

Boy bands and their factory produced brand of pop music was still very much all the rage in 2001, so judging the year by what was popular might not be the smartest move.  Truth was countless bands were emerging underneath the surface, some heralding a new era of guitar driven rock, some pushing metal to wonderful new heights, and other laying the groundwork for modern indie-rock.  Critics at the time were quick to anoint The Strokes as the saviors of rock, and truth be told their debut was a remarkable breath of fresh air from overproduced electronic rock and the god awful nu metal garbage that was polluting our ears. 

The Strokes impact is still being felt, but a lot of the also-rans that burst out in 2001 have long since faded into obscurity.  Likewise just as many obscure bands at the time have found history to be quite kind to their legacy.  What makes 2001 unique is that I was actually making top 100 album lists by this point in time.  The albums that came out from this year entered my life when I had largely figured out my tastes and likes.  This list like every other is going to contain some head-scratchers as well as some obvious entries, but hey hopefully it gets you thinking.  There were too many albums I had to leave off this list.  A few last minute listens that I wanted to include and plenty of omissions that are sure to upset everyone.   Keep in mind some of those omissions will be on the top 500, so hold off on bitching just yet.

I would also like to point out this is my final planned top ten list for a given year.  I don’t have much interest in doing a similar list from the 10’s, although I’m not ruling out another mini-list or two before the big reveal.  Stay tuned.

10. Emperor - Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire and Demise

A few bands would release their final studio albums in 2001 and no one was the wiser.  You might be thinking of NSYNC’s Celebrity, but I was actually talking about Emperor’s Prometheus, which is probably their most bittersweet album knowing it would be their last.  Emperor was too great to be held back by the somewhat limited world of black metal and found themselves branching out with each release.  I was damn close to including In the Nightside Eclipse on my 1994 list, but hard as it might be to believe, they got better with each album.  Prometheus captures Ihsain in all his glory.  The leads are outstanding, the music is epic, complex, heavy as fuck, but with plenty of shifting dynamics.  Despite the complexity and outstanding songs, Emperor remains far from easily accessible.  Which like all their albums makes this album well worth the reward of repeated listens.  In the post-Emperor days, Ihsain has kept busy  but it’s hard to imagine going out on a higher note than this.

9. Arch Enemy - Wages of Sin

Arch Enemy was hardly a new band when they released Wages of Sin, but it was their first with new female vocalist Angela Gossow.  This simple addition injected new life into what was in all honesty a pretty pedestrian and forgettable death metal band.  This is some of the catchiest death metal of the decade, led by Gossow’s blood curdling vocals and the superior shredding of Mike Ammott.  Along with his brother Chris the Ammott boys are at their peak as songwriters, delivering classic after classic.  Believe it or not in my pre-obesity days this was probably my favorite album to go running to.  This album is unrelenting, thanks in part to Daniel Erlandsson’s drumming.  He seems to play the drums like he was generally pissed off at them, while still keeping things incredibly tight. Arch Enemy seemed content to do this album over again with their next two releases, but the original still sounds the best.

8. Michelle Branch - The Spirit Room

That is not a type-o.  Michelle Branch’s debut was easily the best thing to come out of the millennial pop boom.  Signed to Maverick records most of the album was done while she was still 17, and aside from all the super slick production are countless outstanding melodies.  What made this album remarkable is the fact that Branch was in many cases the sole songwriter here, including the hit singles “All You Wanted” and “Goodbye to You”.  People might be a little reminiscent of the singles on this album, but every song could have been a top ten hit.  My personal favorite has always been “You Get Me” which is about as pretty of a song as you’ll find about liking that slightly weird girl.  Her voice, complete with some stellar harmony vocals really carries the thing through and at the time seemed to herald the arrival of a new superstar.  Unfortunately Branch can join a long list of artists who never quite lived up to the promise of their debut.  Her post Spirit Room output includes a moderately successful group The Wreckers and recording one of the worst songs of all time with Santana.  This album though is just pop perfection, and it’s high time someone other than me realizes it.

7. Bob Dylan - Love and Theft

Ok here’s a bit of blasphemy, I had no intention of putting this album on my list.  Plenty of critics put this at the top of their lists for 2001, and several others had it as one of the best albums of the decade.  I always just sort of shrugged my shoulders and said “yeah it’s good, but I think you might be high”.  Well as a mere formality I listened to it again while researching and I’m starting to see just what all the big fuss was about.  This is Dylan with his swagger back.  Time out of Mind was something of a revelation, a comeback album that showed the old man still had it, Love and Theft was that old man knowing he had it, and having the time of his life with it.  His backing band rocks harder than any he’s ever had (including The Band), and lyrically this is right on par with any of his 60s work.  What’s incredible is he turned 60 just before releasing this album, proving once and for all he’s still capable of topping any of his contemporaries. 

6. The Shins - Oh, Inverted World

I’ll admit I was very late to this party.  The Shins debut is the only album on my top ten I didn’t own for at least a decade, and I was sorely missing out.  Along with The Strokes, The Shins seemed to herald in the new era of indie rock.  They channeled Pavement but with much more refinement and melody.  James Mercer’s lyrics are moving beyond the need to be clever and opening up in a way that steered far clear of the whiny emo kids, quite the balancing act.  “Caring is Creepy” opens the album and probably is the albums finest moment, but that doesn’t mean every other track doesn’t hold it’s own.  Musically this seems to be right at home in late 60s British rock, notably The Zombies and Kinks influence.  Apparently many people now associate this album with Garden State, and well screw that movie, I’d rather have my own associations with it.

5. The Strokes - Is This It?

There was a lot of hype in 2001.  Alicia Keys was going to be the next great R&B legend, Nickelback wasn’t going to suck harder than any band ever in the history of music, and The Strokes were here to save rock and roll.  The Strokes had the hype machine rolling harder than anyone else in 2001 and their album seemed poised for a Nevermind-esque takeover of rock.  Although history has been quite kind to this album, the revolution wasn’t quite as immediate as we would have thought.  However along with The Shins, this seemed to define the modern indie rock sound, even if it was released on a major label.  This was a throwback album, that deliberately invoked the new wave rockers of the late 70s without plagiarizing.  Much of the album was actually featured on the Hard to Explain EP, which gave plenty of people time to get acquainted with the songs.  The bass line on the title track is damn near the finest of the decade.  I happen to prefer the UK version, primarily for the better cover and also the inclusion of “New York City Cops” which was pulled after September 11th for fear of being insensitive.  The timing might have been bad for that song, but it was perfect for the band who seemed to embody all the legendary New York bands right when all the world’s eyes were on that city.

4. System of a Down - Toxicity

I went to Ozzfest in 1999 and had one hell of a miserable time.  The second band who played was System of a Down and in between nearly every act a video for their song “Sugar” was playing.  I must have heard that song 10 times that day and decided “fuck this band”.  So a couple of years later when “Chop Suey” came around I thought this might be a step in the right direction.  I had a friend at the time that played that song a hell of a lot, enough to convince me maybe I was wrong about this band, or at the very least maybe their new album was a bit more refined.  Like a few million other people I bought Toxicity and haven’t regretted it since.  This album is all over the place, and they seem just as comfortable discussing social issues as absurd songs about pogo sticks.  Unlike a lot of self important metal bands writing songs about Satan and other such nonsense, System of a Down actually seemed like a band with something to say.  The dynamic duo of Malakian and Tankain were so far removed from the rest of the metal world that a few shortsighted critics started calling the band “Armenian Metal”.  They may have refined some of their more melodic moments on Hypnotize/Mezmerize but there is plenty of brilliant songwriting here.  My personal favorite remains “Atwa”, but you can’t go wrong with the title track, “Science”, “Needles”, “Aerials”, hell the whole damn album. 

3. Opeth - Blackwater Park

Despite the fact that Blackwater Park was Opeth’s 5th album, it was the first one I ever heard.  By 2001, they were being called the most intelligent band in death metal, and this album is proof positive that praise was accurate.  Mikael Akerfeldt was really coming into his own after their previous three albums, and this seemed to step up the progressive game.  The title was taken from a very obscure early 70s progressive rock band and it seems like Akerfeldt is channeling the ghosts of those old obscure prog rock bands.  It features pretty much everything the band did well, a mere 8 songs that are all epics in their own right (with the exception of the short “Patterns in the Ivy”).  Every song seems to have it’s mosh pit worthy heaviness as well as slowed down acoustic passages, odd timings, bizarre eastern melodies, both clean singing and guttural growls.  Opeth is a band that tries to give you everything you could ever want in every song at once, and somehow it works.  They take their sweet time with their songs, letting grooves repeat and sink in, and they always seem to give their riffs the proper amount of attention.  Blackwater Park might very well be their masterpiece, but really they could do no wrong for many, many years.

2. Jay-Z - The Blueprint

I wasn’t much of a Jay-Z fan when he first got popular.  Most of my friends seemed to agree with me as we preferred our rap to be G-funk inspired, as well as that random No Limit phase which I’m not terribly proud of.  Then when I was in Maryland a friend of mine got The Blueprint.  It was released on September 11th, and while hanging out with him and a few other friends we listened to this album a lot.  One listen through I thought maybe I was wrong about Jay-Z, after the 20th time I realized this was some sort of masterpiece.  The Blueprint is simply one of the greatest rap albums of all time and no matter how much I listen to it, my opinion is just strengthened in the matter.  This is also the album that launched the career of Kanye West, particularly the lead off single “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)”, although many would prefer Kanye’s Doors' inspired “Takeover”.  Unlike nearly all of his other albums Jay has only one guest star on the entire album, a still relevant Eminem.  The result is the best MC in the business realizing his status and proceeding to back up his boasts 13 nearly perfect tracks.  Jay’s gifts as a story teller are well in tact and his flow is constantly helped along by some of the best beats ever assembled.  It might have seemed a bit daft to call out Nas on “Takeover” but 14 years later Jay-Z is still topping the charts and it appears he easily won that war.  The only time he permits himself any bit of humility is when rapping about the late Notorious B.I.G. when he says “If I ain’t better than Big, I’m the closest one.”   On the Blueprint the man more than backed up his legendary swagger.

1. Daft Punk - Discovery

As much as I love The Blueprint, my number one was pretty much a foregone conclusion.  Daft Punk have been pretty far from prolific in their careers (certainly not on Jay-Z’s ridiculous pace), which makes their few actual albums stand out even more.  Random Access Memories was a fantastic album that showed these two guys could still wipe the floor with anyone else in the dance world.  If anything that album made Discovery all the better because it’s that much superior.  Ironic that the four year wait for this album seemed an eternity, but they instantly threw out everything from their debut.  Gone was the limited drum beats, the boring techno passages, and in it’s place was an epic of disco funk.  “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” is still my favorite song from the album and seems to perfectly sum up how far past Homework they were.  “Aerodynamic” features some god damn brilliant music that could have come from an 8-bit NES game.  “Digital Love”, “Face to Face”, and of course the first single “One More Time” are all phenomenal tracks.  I’ve probably listened to this album 100 times since 2001, and I couldn’t imagine ever getting sick of it.  This might not be the best album of the decade, but if anyone says it is, I wouldn’t argue. 

My Top 10 Albums: 1994

So in answer to the question millions of my readers have been asking me, the next top ten list would be 1994.  This list took a good amount of time largely because I didn’t really know what year to do.  I wavered between 1991 and 1992 before settling on ‘94.  There are a few reasons for this, and I’ll get into all of those in a moment. 

1994 was the first year I can recall really, really following music.  I was 10 going on 11, and I spent that entire summer watching MTV and VH1.  I tuned in regularly to Alternative Nation, Headbanger’s Ball, 120 Minutes and to a lesser extent Yo! MTV Raps.  Are you getting nostalgic for those glory days when the M stood for music?  The point is that this is when I decided to listen to something besides Queen and other classic rock bands.  It was a good time to tune into what was happening in music, because as my list will indicate there was great music all over the place in 1994.

Truth be told the music I remember most from that summer is largely Ace of Base, Salt ‘n’ Peppa, Boyz II Men, and “Closer”.  Not Nine Inch Nails per se, just that video being on all the time, every day.  1994 was also the year Kurt Cobain died which cast a black cloud over all of music.  Alternative music or it’s noisy Seattle cousin grunge were all the rage that year, at least in terms of hype.  Jar of Flies, Superunknown, Vitalogy, and too many more albums no one remembers came and went that year. 

This was the era when major labels were scooping up every obscure noisy band hoping they’d be the next big thing.  As a result countless awful bands who had no business making music suddenly arrived on a national stage, but there were a few diamonds to be found.  Unlikely bands like Dinosaur Jr., The Meat Puppets, and Pavement found themselves with actual hit singles. 

1994 was also a year of legendary rap debuts.  The Notorious BIG, Nas, and Outkast all released their first albums in 1994.  Despite the fact that Death Row was still largely dominating sales at the time with “Regulators”, “Murder was the Case”, etc. ‘94 was the year New York fought back.  It also saw the first wave of Wu-Tang solo albums and side projects, particularly RZA’s Gravediggaz, and Method Man’s Tical. 

Oasis was largely credited with revitalizing British rock in 1994, but they were hardly alone.  A handful of landmark albums from England also appeared in 1994, such as Blur’s Parklife, Suede’s Dog Man Star, and The Manic Street Preachers’ Holy Bible.  Perhaps even more impressive was the electronic music coming out of England at the time.  Trip-hop got it’s first taste of commercial success with Portishead’s Dummy, but there was also The Prodigy putting out arguably the most frantic techno music around. 

For these reasons and many others this list was hard to put together.  My last top 100 list contained a whopping 7 albums from 1994 (although not necessarily the top 7 on this list).  It would seem easy to select an additional 3 albums to round out this list, but well I’m going to go ahead and admit there will be a few disappointed readers out there.  There are probably only a small handful of people who would agree with my top choice, but that’s what makes it my list, not yours.  I didn’t necessarily attempt to make this list diverse, and I apologize for the lack of metal in 1994, but I’d say blame Pantera and Megadeth for releasing their 3rd and 4th best albums of the decade in 1994.  I’d like to give a special nod to Nirvana’s Unplugged album.  For reasons that once made a lot more sense to me I’ve never really counted live albums for list consideration.  That little footnote out of the way, here’s my list:
 

10. Oasis - Definitely Maybe

There are probably a dozen albums that would have been worthy for the final spot on this list, and I apologize to the fans of each of them, but Oasis was just better.  Definitely Maybe just seemed to stand out as the best of the new guitar drenched pop rock that was coming out in the mid-90s.  Despite all the Beatles comparisons, Defnitely Maybe seems to borrow more from The Sex Pistols and Mott the Hoople than the fab four.  Noel Gallagher got voice of a generation praise for his songwriting, which is saying something because most of the songs on this album were written in about a weekend after boasting to their label that he had tons of originals ready to go.  As a result the album more than “borrows” from other sources, but mixes it all together in a way decidedly unique.  From the opening track this is a band with big dreams and aspirations, before those dreams were realized and they self destructed.  For their debut though, it’s just about as perfect as messy British rock can get.

9. Green Day - Dookie

There’s only one other album on this list that I owned in 1994, which was underneath my Christmas tree in 1994.  Dookie was the major label debut of Green Day and it represented a lot of what was crazy in music in the mid-90s.  They were allowed to run wild with their material but in the studio it was cleaned up just enough to sell, and boy did it ever.  Billy Joe Armstrong seemed to resonate with every slightly immature slacker on the planet before maturing to elder statesman.  Despite the fact that Green Day single handedly made pop-punk a thing, the band seems to owe equal debts to Ray Davies as Joe Strummer.  Listening to the album today feels like a nostalgic greatest hits collection, perhaps because there were three monstrous singles released, as well as several other tracks getting major airplay.  This probably doubled as the first album I owned with a parental advisory sticker on it, I was such a little bad ass, but still today this album is nearly flawless.

8. Morrissey - Vauxhall and I

For those people who clamor for more Smiths albums should do themselves a favor and investigate Morrissey the solo artist.  Your Arsenal is certainly growing on me, but my favorite album from Morrissey is still Vauxhall and I.  It contains damn near my favorite song he ever wrote (including Smiths), which of course is “The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get”.  The rest of the album is nearly as amazing, particularly the opener “Now My Heart is Full”.  Morrissey hasn’t lost any of his bitter touch and lyrically hasn’t dropped a bit.  More than a few critics considered this to be his closest solo album to a Smiths record, and I’m not going to argue.  Probably why I always liked it so damn much.

7. Blur - Parklife

When you mention Blur in the US someone inevitably screams “Whoo-hoo” and we all hearken back to when “Song 2” was a hit.  1994’s Parklife however was their major iconic music statement.  In the span of a surprisingly brisk 16 songs Blur runs the gamut of nearly a half-century of popular British music.  They tackle dance pop, new wave, punk and music hall.  There are some killer melodies on here, and the title track became something of an anthem in the UK.  It might seem a bit pretentious, but they seem perfectly suited to do nearly any style of music and it shows on the record.  They might not match the grandiose posturing of Suede, but it’s the brevity of the songs that helps to salvage the record.  This album delivers exactly what it needs in exactly the right doses, a superb balancing act.  

6. Nas - Illmatic

Speaking of brevity, Nas delivered one of the all time greatest hip-hop debuts with Illmatic.  The hype train was up and running for Nas after his brief guest spot on Main Source’s criminally out of print Breaking Atoms album came out in 1991.  This album was aimed to take down the west coast juggernaut of G-funk, and as a result the beats on Illmatic seem to sound like New York.  The beats are harder, the samples more jagged, this isn’t the smooth funk of the west coast sound, Nas was ushering in the new wave of street realism.  It also helped sound the death tolls of the alternative rap movement from the Native Tongue family.  Perhaps the best part about the album is it’s length.  Only 10 songs long, which includes an intro, Nas didn’t find it necessary to fill a mandatory 70 minutes of music with his debut.  Something many other rappers can learn from.  Nearly every time I listen to the album I get have a new favorite, but is there any opening statement better than "New York State of Mind"?

5. Jeff Buckley - Grace

You might be noticing something of a theme.  There are 5 debut albums on this top ten, and in the case of Jeff Buckley this was his only album.  An obsessive perfectionist, he spent an absurd amount of time on Grace, and never seemed to be satisfied with any of his later recordings to put out an official follow up album.  I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say this might be the single best vocal performance on record.  His voice was damn near the best in music and he came up with ten songs to brilliantly showcase it.  He probably is the most overqualified singer to ever tackle a Leonard Cohen song, and infinitely improve upon it with “Hallelujah”.  This is probably the only album I can think of that would contain perhaps two of the ten best songs ever recorded.  The other being “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” which might inexplicably be better than “Hallelujah”.  The title track and “Last Goodbye” are also in the running for some of the best songs ever, but it’s the total package that makes Grace so phenomenal.  It’s one of those rare moments when we got to see a fully formed vision from an artist just entering his prime.  We could’ve used some more Jeff Buckley albums in our lives, but luckily the one we got was damn near perfect. 

4. The Notorious B.I.G. - Ready to Die

Sorry Jeru the Damaja, you did not have the best debut rap album of 1994.  Even though his true impact wasn’t really felt until his untimely death (a mere two months before Buckley), Biggie was the rapper who brought the East Coast back.  Before the fatal feud between him and 2 Pac was underway, Biggie was a prodigy of a rapper who was marketed to perfection by Sean Combs and Bad Boy records.  Take away the videos and their “fashion” sense and what’s left is one of the greatest rappers of all time doing his thing.  Rocking a deep baritone reminiscent of King Tee, Biggie dropped some of the best rhymes anyone had ever heard and it was up to the rest of the rap world to catch up to him.  He could flow like Rakim but had the ability to tell intricate stories like Slick Rick.  The sound of the album was very much reminiscent of the west coast style, sampling well known hits, but forever overshadowing his source material.  Method Man is the only guest on the record (although Biggie does rap in two distinct voices on “Gimme the Loot”) so it’s all Biggie.  Unfortunately Puffy finds it necessary to add “color” to the tracks threatening to derail the whole thing, particularly the interlude on “Big Poppa” and almost all of “Juicy”, but Biggie’s skills were just too much to be brought down.

3. Weezer - Weezer

Ok the last debut album on my list, who knew this would be the best?  I’m sure I might change my arbitrary ranking in a matter of days, but Weezer’s first album is just perfect.  I was a fan of this band pretty much from day one and they were the first band I could consider “dork rock”.  They made references to Kiss, X-men, and Dungeons & Dragons all on “In the Garage”, how could I not love them?  They garnered quite a few comparisons to The Cars, in no small part thanks to Ric Ocasik who produced the album.  Like Nas, Weezer only needed 10 songs to craft their album which is probably the first and last time Weezer will ever be compared to Nas.  True story, my friends and I in 6th grade used to make a game out of having a conversation entirely in Weezer song titles, needless to say “Undone (The Sweater Song)” was a little tough to fit into a sentence.  Weezer made songs for the socially awkward.  They were a band who loved Kiss and Van Halen but seemed far too geeky to actually sing about having sex.  It was an honest and super catchy record and another bit of perfection.

2. Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

1994 was perhaps a simpler time.  This was before anyone paid any attention to Marilyn Manson, and Eminem was busy being obscure in Detroit.  It was still genuinely possible to offend people, and Trent Reznor did.  He scared parents, his lyrics were blasphemous, violently sexual, and their live shows were mini-riots.  In the process he became the master of the one man band and took his sweet time delivering a follow up to Pretty Hate Machine.  Broken was a bit of a teaser bridging the gap, but all bets were off on The Downward Spiral.  Despite his status as the king of industrial music, there are moments on this album that would have been right at home on an old Brian Eno album.  Nearly every song on the album incorporates some odd-time signatures and his screaming cathartic vocals can go to a whisper in a moments notice.  There isn’t a thing I’d change about this album, and sorry to say I probably prefer the original version of “Hurt” thank you very much.  “Closer” is one of those iconic tracks that I should have gotten sick of long ago, and believe me in the summer of ‘94 I heard it probably every hour.  Somehow though, that song like the rest of this album still remarkably holds up.  It might not be the best song on the album but it probably sums up the album as well as anything.

1. Dream Theater - Awake

Ordinarily I agree with Allmusic.com on their numerous ratings.  Somehow though the top two albums from 1994 we seem to be on vastly different pages.  Awake is about as polished as Dream Theater ever got without compromising.  They got a little heavier as evidenced by the introduction of 7-string guitars, and they recorded the album in the same facility Metallica used for their black album.  James LaBrie still aimed for the highest notes he could hit before constant touring led him to subdue his future vocals.  It was also the last to feature original keyboardist Kevin Moore who closes the album with the personal “Space Dye Vest”.  “6:00” opens things up with a memorable and catchy drum beat before Mike Portnoy got too lazy to construct distinctive drum parts, and the album only gets better from there.  Awake was another example of how Dream Theater might just be the best band in the world when it came out, something that time has dulled somewhat.  I can’t help but admit I’m a sucker for prog-rock, and this is about as great a progressive album as there is.  The music I have in my head, down to the ridiculous shredding, crazy fills, and vocals is what Dream Theater sounded like on Awake.  In the crazy world of 1994 a progressive metal band made an album that topped them all, and it seems like it makes perfect sense in retrospect.