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.
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