The 10 best albums of the 2000s year by year
Over the latter half of the 20th century, propelled by giant technological leaps, music embodied the apical vanguard for Western culture. In the 1960s, the rock music of the hippie generation first lifted a middle finger to capitalism and post-war oppression; in the ’70s, punk rock reared an angry face in the line of political fire to oppose the more virtuosic musings of prog-rock; the ubiquity of the synthesiser dictated the ’80s, and the ’90s marked the rise of sampling, with hip-hop pushing the creative curve.
I hear many people today who deem the ’90s as the last truly great decade for music, while others will argue a death had occurred amid the emergence of MTV in the ’80s. However you see it, it’s difficult to argue that music has lost its potency as the central driver behind cultural change.
In the modern day, we can blame extortionate ticket fees, social media, the death of grassroots venues, financial greed, the ease of streaming and an inexhaustible array of ghastly factors for the decline of quality and creative dynamism at the popular front of music – just listen to the tripe they air like a stale fart on BBC Radio 1.
Indeed, poor music has always found its way, like parasitic ivy, to the canopy of popular sound, but since the millennium, the musical landscape has become more difficult to navigate as we wade stoically through a swirling mess of mutant sub-genres and boy bands. Alas, even today, if we know where to look, there’s a wealth of truly innovative artists fighting for light from the forest floors.
Today, we’re celebrating the greatest albums of the 2000s, a decade saved by nostalgia. While the decade was home to some truly dreadful R&B and boy band fodder, green shoots of hope could be found in the revival of indie and garage music. Elsewhere, rock bands bravely harnessed experimental electronic music to bring something entirely unprecedented to the fore.
The 10 best 2000s albums year by year:
2000: Radiohead – Kid A
In the late 1990s, Radiohead sought to rest their guitars in favour of synthesisers and drum machines. The frontman Thom Yorke had grown weary of traditional rock creation and decided to knead the influence of IDM by the likes of Aphex Twin, Autechre and Squarepusher into the band’s dough.
The glorious results of these post-OK Computer sessions can be heard across 2000’s Kid A and 2001’s Amnesiac. The former, for most fans, just about takes gold thanks to its pioneering post-rock shock factor. From the first needle drop, ‘Everything in its Right Place’ made it patently clear Radiohead never planned to stand still. Other highlight tracks from the album include ‘How to Disappear Completely’ and ‘Idioteque’.
2001: The Strokes – Is This It
Radiohead got the millennium off to a fantastic start, folding electronic music into rock. Meanwhile, New York City experienced an indie rock renaissance of sorts, with The Strokes, Interpol, LCD Soundsystem and the like laying their first tracks. The most memorable and artistically perfect album of this movement was The Strokes’ debut album of 2001, Is This It.
“Our music was, like, [the Doors’], but trying to be classical,” drummer Fabrizio Moretti told Rolling Stone in 2002. “We all took music classes and tried writing songs, and when we put them together, they were this crazy amalgam of insane ideas that we thought was really cool.” The band’s thirst for 1960s rock nostalgia erupted with crucial nuance, inspiring a new generation of rock artists.
2002: The Streets – Original Pirate Material
For me, English hip-hop has never hit the same peaks as The Streets’ debut, Original Pirate Material. The album was nothing short of a miracle for the project’s leader Mike Skinner, who recorded most of the album from the humble setting of his Brixton flat. Skinner’s lyrical humour was merged with contemporary hip-hop and UK garage influences to create a wholly original experience.
Original Pirate Material was lauded by the critics upon its release and gained further traction following The Streets’ follow-up of 2004, A Grand Don’t Come for Free. Indeed, the album is a production masterclass, but vitally, Skinner’s immersive lyrics have the listener just as happy to sit and listen as they are to shuffle on the dancefloor. “So let’s put on our classics, and we’ll have a little dance, shall we?”
2003: The White Stripes – Elephant
The 2000s was a decade of revivals: New York boasted indie rock defibrillation courtesy of The Strokes et al., with Arctic Monkeys spearheading a similar movement a few years later in the north of England. Meanwhile, in Detroit, The White Stripes, comprised of Jack and Meg White, courageously led a garage rock renaissance. The duo’s third studio album, White Blood Cells, shook the floor in 2001, but 2003’s Elephant sent ripples around the world that we can still feel today.
When recording Elephant, the Whites had established their characteristically stripped-back garage-blues style. With Jack on the guitar and octave pedal and Meg thumping out elephantine quakes on the drums, the album was void of a dull moment with the Pixies’ loud-quiet-loud method. Most people who were alive in 2003 will remember headbanging and maybe even strumming air guitar to the sound of stomping singles like ‘The Hardest Button to Button’ and ‘Seven Nation Army’.
2004: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus
Since his days with The Birthday Party, Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave has led a prolific and wildly capricious career. Cave’s discography follows him through rife perils of love, loss and addiction, wielding music of anger, sorrow and sentimentality. Cave and his Bad Seeds have concurrently managed to frame these rolling emotions with a diverse framework of instrumental styles.
While many fans pick out 1997’s The Boatman’s Call as the greatest Bad Seeds album, I often find myself sticking up for this gem of 2004. I’m not here to determine which of the two is better, for they are different. However, I appreciate Abattoir Blues as another lyrical peak, synchronised with robust and more varied instrumental emotions, from the elation of ‘Breathless’ to the desperation of ‘Abattoir Blues’ and the rapturous poignance of ‘O Children’.
2005: Gorillaz – Demon Days
Damon Albarn took an intriguing sidestep from his Britpop roots in the early 2000s to form Gorillaz. As premiered in the eponymous debut album of 2001, Gorillaz were something of a stylistic enigma. Was it rock? Was it hip-hop? Electro-pop? Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett conceived the virtual band concept, and with this pioneering idea came a refreshing and diverse sound to boot.
This is a point of contention, but for me, Gorillaz struck their peak in 2005 with Demon Days. Like most of the band’s material, the album was brimming with top-drawer collaboration, including De La Soul, who contributed to the immensely popular lead single ‘Feel Good Inc.’; Shaun Ryder, who sang on ‘It’s Dare’, and MF Doom, who rapped on ‘November Has Come’.
2006: Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
In 2006, all heads swivelled to Sheffield as Arctic Monkeys swaggered into the limelight. After the seismic landings of its two predating dingles, ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ and ‘When The Sun Goes Down’, Alex Turner and his four-piece unleashed their debut miracle, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.
The album was an indie masterclass and undoubtedly one of the fondest musical memories of the decade. It introduced Turner’s lyrical idiosyncrasies with a rough-and-ready rock style from which the group gradually departed over subsequent years. With its wry reflection of urban life in the north of England, the band garnered a watertight following nationwide. Today, the band enjoys a strong global following, but many British fans pine for a return to this early sound.
2007: LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
As a Radiohead nerd, it was difficult to omit In Rainbows for 2007, but for want of variety and with the superior Kid A already in the locker, LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver was a more than worthy opponent. The New York-based electro-rock group joined the city’s thriving indie scene in the 2000s alongside The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol.
Following their self-titled debut album of 2005, LCD Soundsystem managed to one-up themselves two years later. Sound of Silver celebrated a convergence of peaks, with James Murphy flexing his lyrical muscles while the band displayed a healthy variety of well-produced textures to guide the emotional 55-minute journey.
2008: Portishead – Third
Portishead made one of the most celebrated submissions to the trip-hop tapestry in 1994 with their Mercury Award-winning debut album, Dummy. Since then, they have only returned for two full-length studio albums, 1997’s Portishead and 2008’s Third. Although they fall under the trip-hop banner, one they share with their Bristol neighbours Massive Attack, Portishead have never been comfortable with the label.
In Third, Portishead made a triumphant return after more than a decade of silence, and the material showed an eagerness to evade the trip-hop tag. The experimental and diverse album combined influences from disparate regions of the musical map, including krautrock, surf rock, doo-wop and even John Carpenter movie soundtracks. The album’s first two singles, ‘Machine Gun’ and ‘The Rip’, perfectly illustrate the release’s mercurial nature.
2009: The Horrors – Primary Colours
As the 2000s drew to a close, the gothic alt-rockers from Southend-on-Sea delivered their second album, Primary Colours. The album, produced by Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, was a critical and commercial success and, for me, marks their greatest achievement so far. Primary Colours was a kaleidoscopic, shoegaze-influenced and more refined update on The Horrors’ 2007 debut, Strange House.
The album’s most memorable moment was its lead single, ‘Sea Within a Sea’, propelled by its burgeoning synth break. Elsewhere, tracks like ‘Mirror’s Image’, ‘Scarlet Fields’ and ‘Who Can Say’ offered equally absorbing vibrations. “We had such an amazing time working on it, writing it and getting lost in it,” bassist Rhys “Spider” Webb told Clash of recording Primary Colours. “We’d wander into the studio and then never want to leave.”
