Annual Playlists

2006: I’ve Got No Party To Go To

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In 2006, now fully into my thirties, my life gradually solidified—I had a steady job, a good living situation and I even met the person I’d eventually marry. Music too remained a constant, even if none of the albums on my original year-end top ten endured to point of warranting their own entries in my 100 Albums project (the one that did, I didn’t hear until its American edition came out the following year.)

Starting this year, I began making best-of mix CDs to send out to friends, a ritual I kept up through 2010 (and briefly revived in 2015.) Most of the first seventeen tracks here appeared on that mix CD, with Marit Bergman’s winsome yet exuberant “No Party” now finally on streaming services (it wasn’t when I put together an earlier version of this playlist in 2018.) The latter half below is full of songs that have endured, from massive hits (Gnarls Barkley, Scissor Sisters) to barking-mad obscurities (please listen to the Herbert song all the way to the end) and everything in between. I would apologize for that Rodrigo y Gabriela-Sparks-Sufjan Stevens-Charlotte Gainsbourg sequence for inducing whiplash if not, even by 2006, iPod shuffling hadn’t already conditioned us into listening to music that way.

Also, if someone were to locate a copy of this playlist decades from now without knowing the title indicating the year, I’d like to think due to the timeless nature of such tracks as “Be Here Now”, “Crowd Surf Off A Cliff” and “I Feel Like Going Home”, they might not immediately deduce what exact year all these tunes came from. On the other hand, The Decemberists, TV On The Radio and The Knife are all defiantly 2006, summarizing an era when Pitchfork and Myspace ruled and practically no one knew what smartphones would portend in the immediate years to come.

2006: I’ve Got No Party To Go To

  1. Marit Bergman, “No Party”
  2. Neko Case, “Hold On, Hold On”
  3. The BellRays, “Third Time’s The Charm”
  4. Regina Spektor, “Better”
  5. Hot Chip, “Boy From School”
  6. TV On The Radio, “A Method”
  7. Belle and Sebastian, “Dress Up In You”
  8. Nellie McKay, “Long and Lazy River”
  9. The Hidden Cameras, “Awoo”
  10. Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins, “Rise Up With Fists!”
  11. James Hunter, “People Gonna Talk”
  12. Paul Brill, “Don’t Tell Them”
  13. Camera Obscura, “If Looks Could Kill”
  14. Emm Gryner, “Almighty Love”
  15. Calexico, “Cruel”
  16. Junior Boys, “In The Morning”
  17. Pet Shop Boys, “Integral”
  18. The Knife, “One Hit”
  19. Gnarls Barkley, “Crazy”
  20. Nelly Furtado, “Say It Right”
  21. Ben Kweller, “Sundress”
  22. The Decemberists, “O Valencia!”
  23. The Radio Dept., “The Worst Taste In Music”
  24. The Divine Comedy, “Diva Lady”
  25. Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton, “Crowd Surf Off A Cliff”
  26. Ray LaMontagne, “Be Here Now”
  27. Herbert, “The Movers and The Shakers”
  28. Pernice Brothers, “Automaton”
  29. Rodrigo y Gabriela, “Tamacun”
  30. Sparks, “Dick Around”
  31. Sufjan Stevens, “Star of Wonder”
  32. Charlotte Gainsbourg, “Everything I Cannot See”
  33. Scissor Sisters, “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’”
  34. The Killers, “Read My Mind
  35. Chris Isaak, “King Without A Castle”
  36. Yo La Tengo, “I Feel Like Going Home”

2005: Nothing Can Touch Us

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Irresistible to begin one of these annual playlists with a song declaring, “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me.” Those words surely resonated for me in 2005—I had just turned thirty, my love life was in perpetual flux and I yearned for something resembling actual adulthood (and not an apartment with five roommates. )

Just as I saw more movies in cinemas this year (including my first trip to the Toronto International Film Festival) than any previously, I likely listened to more new music as well. Among the three dozen favorites below, we have unusual cameos (Cindy and Kate from The B-52s on “Take My Time”! An opera singer on the Calexico/Iron and Wine collaboration!), triumphant returns-to-form (Depeche Mode, Erasure, Aimee Mann and New Order), and defining tracks such as Sufjan Stevens’ iconic ode to the Windy City, Fiona Apple’s Disney-meets-David Lynch title track from her troubled third album and The New Pornographers’ breathless, towering mini-epic—the centerpiece of an LP I nearly gave its own 100 Albums entry.

If you asked me what some of the big hits of 2005 were, I’d answer “Hollaback Girl”, “Gold Digger”, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and… that’s all I can name. But this mix is packed with songs that received copious play at the time on my just-purchased first iPod: Andrew Bird’s catchy, soaring, indecipherable wordplay; Metric’s Blondie-worthy disco-rock; My Morning Jacket’s incredible fusion of Lynyrd Skynyrd and XTC; Pernice Brothers’ blissful instrumental; Amy Rigby’s disarming meet-the-new-wife fable; glorious, meticulous power-pop from The Magic Numbers and Oranger; Art Brut perilously walking a fine line between stoopid and clever; Doves’ alternately spiky and swaying Motown pastiche; and the now mostly-forgotten Shivaree’s dreamy, undulating ballad, its unresolved melancholy and regret just hanging there, affecting and unshakable.

As anticipated and thrilling as Kate Bush’s return from exile was, Saint Etienne’s latest was for me an event—the London trio’s worst selling album (not even released domestically until the following year with a stoopid rearranged track listing), it was an instant classic with the effortlessly joyous “Stars Above Us” a buoyant anthem (not even a single in the UK!) now awaiting rediscovery.

2005: Nothing Can Touch Us

  1. The Mountain Goats, “This Year”
  2. Art Brut, “Formed A Band”
  3. Calexico/Iron and Wine, “He Lays In The Reins”
  4. Junior Senior, “Take My Time”
  5. The Decemberists, “The Sporting Life”
  6. Depeche Mode, “Precious”
  7. The New Pornographers, “The Bleeding Heart Show”
  8. Amy Rigby, “The Trouble With Jeanie”
  9. Bettye LaVette, “Joy”
  10. Doves, “Almost Forgot Myself”
  11. Metric, “Poster Of A Girl”
  12. Sufjan Stevens, “Chicago”
  13. Keren Ann, “Greatest You Can Find”
  14. Aimee Mann, “Video”
  15. Kate Bush, “A Coral Room”
  16. Roisin Murphy, “Through Time”
  17. Fiona Apple, “Extraordinary Machine”
  18. Mike Doughty, “I Hear The Bells”
  19. Erasure, “Here I Go Impossible Again”
  20. Goldfrapp, “Ride A White Horse”
  21. My Morning Jacket, “Off The Record”
  22. Pernice Brothers, “Discover A Lovelier You”
  23. Marianne Faithfull, “Crazy Love”
  24. Shivaree, “Mexican Boyfriend”
  25. Antony and the Johnsons, “Fistful of Love”
  26. Martha Wainwright, “When The Day Is Short”
  27. The Magic Numbers, “Love Me Like You”
  28. Madonna, “Hung Up”
  29. Andrew Bird, “Fake Palindromes”
  30. New Order, “Waiting For The Siren’s Call”
  31. Super Furry Animals, “Zoom!”
  32. Spoon, “The Beast and Dragon, Adored”
  33. Oranger, “Sukiyaki”
  34. Ivy, “Ocean City Girl”
  35. Saint Etienne, “Stars Above Us”
  36. Ben Folds, “Landed”

2004: Take Your Records, Leave Me Mine

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A decade after alternative rock peaked culturally (if not yet commercially), indie rock arguably did the same, but it was a whole new world—for starters, you rarely heard this music on the radio. More often, you had to find it online, usually at Pitchfork, arguably never closer to the zeitgeist since then, especially when it placed Arcade Fire’s Funeral on top of its year-end best albums list. I don’t think I was even aware of the band until this happened, and I spent most of the year writing for a competing website (albeit a far less buzzy one.)

The playlist I’ve assembled for 2004 contains so much of this stuff: in addition to my favorite Funeral track (and perhaps one of the few AF songs I can still stomach following recent allegations about the band’s leader), there’s Sufjan Stevens, Franz Ferdinand, Neko Case, Ted Leo and Tegan & Sara. Plus, a handful of relatively obscure but likeminded artists I was assigned to review, including Tamas Wells, Marit Bergman, Tompaulin and Paul Brill, whose New Pagan Love Song (represented by its title track) remains in occasional rotation two decades on.

We also have a few ‘90s holdovers putting out some pretty excellent later-career work: a single from PJ Harvey’s unjustly forgotten Uh Huh Her; Morrissey’s second-last great song to date (which rhymes “bullet” with “gullet”); The Magnetic Fields, triumphant at the impossible task of a follow-up to 69 Love Songs; Jill Sobule interpolating Chicago’s “Saturday In The Park” (and totally getting away with it!) and Sam Phillips with one of her loveliest ever ballads which, along with her “ba, ba, ba” instrumentals found immortality in Gilmore Girls (both the OG series and its Netflix sequel.)

As always, it’s the oddities I adore the most: the Delays’ marvelously androgynous vocalist Greg Gilbert (RIP), Nellie McKay’s gently jaunty, gin-soaked reverie, Madeleine Peyroux’s so-crazy-it-just-might-work cocktail jazz Leonard Cohen cover, even Mark Mothersbaugh’s electro/orchestral score for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (one has to think he never worked with Wes Anderson again cause he knew he could never top this.) However, let me direct your attention to A Girl Called Eddy (aka Erin Moran (not the Happy Days star)). Her elegant, self-titled debut was a cross between Aimee Mann and Dionne Warwick (with a hint of Karen Carpenter) and like nothing else anyone put out in 2004 (not even Feist, I’d argue.) “The Long Goodbye” is such sparkling, heartbreaking pop I never skip it whenever it comes up on shuffle. She finally reemerged four years ago with a nearly-as-good second LP, Been Around, a relief as I feared she become the 00’s version of Jen Trynin.

2004: Take Your Records, Leave Me Mine

  1. Tompaulin, “Slender”
  2. Bebel Gilberto, “Simplesmente”
  3. Delays, “Nearer Than Heaven”
  4. Jens Lekman, “You Are The Light (by which I travel into this and that)”
  5. Jill Sobule, “Cinnamon Park”
  6. Sufjan Stevens, “To Be Alone With You”
  7. Tamas Wells, “Even In The Crowds”
  8. The Magnetic Fields, “I Thought You Were My Boyfriend”
  9. Nellie McKay, “Ding Dong”
  10. Rufus Wainwright, “Gay Messiah”
  11. A.C. Newman, “On The Table”
  12. A Girl Called Eddy, “The Long Goodbye”
  13. Feist, “One Evening”
  14. Junior Boys, “Teach Me How To Fight”
  15. Mark Mothersbaugh, “Ping Island/Lightning Strike Rescue Op”
  16. Paul Brill, “New Pagan Love Song”
  17. Kings of Convenience, “I’d Rather Dance With You”
  18. Madeleine Peyroux, “Dance Me To The End of Love”
  19. Tegan and Sara, “Downtown”
  20. Stars, “Ageless Beauty”
  21. The Futureheads, “Meantime”
  22. Arcade Fire, “Neighborhood # 3 (Power Out)”
  23. Mr. Airplane Man, “How Long”
  24. Neko Case, “The Tigers Have Spoken”
  25. Air, “Venus”
  26. The Divine Comedy, “Our Mutual Friend”
  27. Sam Phillips, “Reflecting Light”
  28. Scissor Sisters, “Mary”
  29. Marit Bergman, “Tomorrow Is Today”
  30. Ron Sexsmith, “From Now On”
  31. Morrissey, “First Of The Gang To Die”
  32. PJ Harvey, “The Letter”
  33. Rilo Kiley, “It’s a Hit”
  34. Franz Ferdinand, “The Dark of a Matinee”
  35. Bjork, “Triumph of a Heart”
  36. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, “Me and Mia”

2003: My Office Glows All Night Long

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I’ve already referenced (via my essay on Want One) just how much music I was listening to in 2003—truly the era of Peak CD for me. Between a major move across town and commencing a short-lived website reviewing gig, it was a busy, heady time, with music remaining one of my few constants (the other being movies.) On that note, some of the more obscure tracks here are from records I was assigned to review: A Northern Chorus’ Smiths-worthy jangle/pastoral instrumental, Troll’s demented, inexplicable noir rock en Espanol (I think), singer/songwriter Rosie Thomas (kind of an indie Shawn Colvin), Egyptian-Belgian diva Natasha Atlas, the inimitable Arab Strap (immortalized in a Belle and Sebastian album title five years before) and the generally forgotten Oranger, whom managed to pull off the neat trick of sounding like XTC, Jellyfish and The Banana Splits all at once.

The three dozen tracks below are but the cream of a bounty of songs that received many spins on my navy blue Sony Discman at the time; I could have easily included another dozen (yes, subsequent playlists will be at least this long.) Thumbing through the below tracks, there’s only a few I didn’t hear until more than a year later, most notably The Radio Dept. when “Pulling Our Weight” resurfaced on the Marie Antoinette soundtrack in 2006. The rest predominantly represent the very best of that era’s indie pop, from relative veterans like the Nick Rhodes-produced Dandy Warhols and the magnificently cursed Wrens (they would never complete a follow-up) to next-big-things TV On The Radio (their Young Liars EP also a discovery via assigned review-writing), Sufjan Stevens and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

In 2003, I was over the moon for both Death Cab For Cutie and The Postal Service, even if Ben Gibbard’s twee voice now feels a little too earnest for middle-aged me (although Death Cab has produced enough songs for a killer Greatest Hits album since then.) Fortunately, this year also happens to have two tunes I’d happily bring along to a desert island: The Shins’ Nilsson-esque chamber pop wonder “Saint Simon” and Canadian outfit Stars’ immortal, resplendent “Elevator Love Letter”, which saved my life more than The Shins or even The Smiths ever did.

2003: My Office Glows All Night Long

  1. The New Pornographers, “The Laws Have Changed”
  2. The Radio Dept., “Pulling Our Weight”
  3. Calexico, “Quattro (World Drifts In)”
  4. Rosie Thomas, “I Play Music”
  5. Basement Jaxx with Lisa Kekaula, “Good Luck”
  6. Arab Strap, “The Shy Retirer”
  7. Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3, “The Ambassador of Soul”
  8. The Postal Service, “Such Great Heights”
  9. Nelly Furtado, “Explode”
  10. Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man, “Tom The Model”
  11. Natacha Atlas, “Eye of the Duck”
  12. Black Box Recorder, “The New Diana”
  13. The Hidden Cameras, “A Miracle”
  14. Ted Leo and The Pharmacists, “Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone”
  15. Thea Gilmore, “Mainstream”
  16. Fountains of Wayne, “Mexican Wine”
  17. A Northern Chorus, “Red Carpet Blues”
  18. Sufjan Stevens, “Romulus”
  19. Pernice Brothers, “The Weakest Shade Of Blue”
  20. Annie Lennox, “Pavement Cracks”
  21. The Shins, “Saint Simon”
  22. Stars, “Elevator Love Letter”
  23. The Dandy Warhols, “The Last High”
  24. The Wrens, “This Boy Is Exhausted”
  25. The Weakerthans, “One Great City!”
  26. Death Cab For Cutie, “Transatlanticism”
  27. Moloko, “Forever More”
  28. Oranger, “Bluest Glass Eye Sea”
  29. Stew, “LA Arteest Café”
  30. TV On The Radio, “Young Liars”
  31. Troll, “Western”
  32. Junior Senior, “Chicks and Dicks”
  33. Belle and Sebastian, “Stay Loose”
  34. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Maps”
  35. Rufus Wainwright, “11:11”
  36. Super Furry Animals, “Slow Life”

2002: I Miss The Innocence I’ve Known

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The title comes from Wilco’s summery ode to (as another song on a Sparks album from that year puts it) Ugly Guys with Beautiful Girls; it’s a reaction to (and nearly an inverse of) last year’s title, and the turnaround speaks volumes of how much had changed for me in that relatively brief time span. I spent the first half of 2002 in a deteriorating relationship which finally, spectacularly collapsed at the end of June; I spent the year’s remainder shellshocked and distressed, but also defiantly impulsive (and, more often than not, carelessly stupid.) I can’t definitively say which half was better or worse but together they permanently color most of my 2002 memories, right down to the art I consumed.

Music was an escape and a healer. I found solace in Sleater-Kinney’s defiant call-to-arms, the Mekons’ razor-sharp reaction to post-9/11 religious fundamentalism (on both sides), Saint Etienne’s revivifying plea to “get the feeling again”, Alison Moyet’s elegant, impassioned inquiry in seeking impossible closure and PJ Harvey lending kickass verve to a great, lost Gordon Gano song that could’ve easily held its own on Violent Femmes. However, I also took comfort in the melancholier hues of Jon Brion’s should’ve-been-nominated-for-an-Oscar Punch Drunk Love theme, the near ethereal wash of Badly Drawn Boy’s About A Boy soundtrack (it should’ve been nominated too), Pet Shop Boys proving that yes, they too can turn out a convincing Dionne Warwick pastiche and the reassurance of tracks by Doves and Emm Gryner, pushing me forward, encouraging me that not all hope was lost.

I began blogging in late 2002, so it was the first instance where I made public my favorite albums of the year. Most of the titles I picked then are represented below (apart from a few: I haven’t listened to Norah Jones or that Ani DiFranco live LP in some time), along with the usual assortment of key tracks (Marianne Faithfull an ideal conduit for Jarvis Cocker’s lyrics; Tegan and Sara making a case for punchy folk rock that doesn’t entirely sound like anything else) and a handful of songs I wouldn’t hear until later (no one knows the late Luna song or Imperial Teen’s banger but everyone should.) Also, for possibly the first time, I do not see one single track here (apart from Kylie’s improbable American comeback) that I would’ve heard on commercial radio at the time—a harbinger of increasingly idiosyncratic, indie-centric listening habits to come.

2002: I Miss The Innocence I’ve Known

  1. Gordon Gano and PJ Harvey “Hitting the Ground”
  2. Frou Frou, “Breathe In”
  3. Kylie Minogue, “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”
  4. Badly Drawn Boy, “Silent Sigh”
  5. Spoon, “The Way We Get By”
  6. Stew, “Reeling”
  7. Carla Bruni, “Quelqu’un m’a dit”
  8. Tori Amos, “Crazy”
  9. DJ Shadow, “Six Days”
  10. Mekons, “Only You And Your Ghost Will Know”
  11. Marianne Faithfull, “Sliding Through Life On Charm”
  12. Jon Brion, “Here We Go”
  13. Wilco, “Heavy Metal Drummer”
  14. Luna, “Lovedust”
  15. Neko Case, “Deep Red Bells”
  16. Sparks, “Suburban Homeboy”
  17. Imperial Teen, “Ivanka”
  18. Tegan and Sara, “Living Room”
  19. Aimee Mann, “Lost In Space”
  20. Beck, “Paper Tiger”
  21. Alison Moyet, “Do You Ever Wonder”
  22. Emm Gryner, “Symphonic”
  23. Pet Shop Boys, “You Choose”
  24. Future Bible Heroes, “Losing Your Affection”
  25. Ivy, “Say Goodbye”
  26. Morcheeba and Kurt Wagner, “What New York Couples Fight About”
  27. Beth Orton, “Concrete Sky”
  28. Doves, “There Goes The Fear”
  29. Saint Etienne, “Action”
  30. Sleater-Kinney, “Step Aside”

2001: We Can Start Over Again

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This year was unquestionably transformative regarding world events: on 9/11, after biking home from work, I cocooned myself in my living room, seeking solace in Bjork’s recently released Vespertine. Even before that date, the music I gravitated towards was in flux. After my brief rediscovery of Top 40 and a somewhat shallow dive into club music, by 2001, indie rock (and pop) had become my mainstays. I listened to WERS extensively, which is where I first heard Emm Gryner, Pernice Brothers and The Soundtrack of Our Lives; I also upped my music journalism intake, mostly via The Village Voice, which is where I first read about The Moldy Peaches, Basement Jaxx and Ted Leo (though for the latter, not until 2003’s Hearts of Oak came out.)

A good chunk of this playlist comprises songs by artists I was already familiar with: Ben Folds’ solo debut (still his best solo track, ever), Depeche Mode’s second-last great single (at least until recently), Gillian Welch’s disarming narrative that did more to humanize Elvis than any number of tributes have before or since, a lovely, essential Belle and Sebastian B-side, an expansive gem plucked from a sprawling Ani DiFranco double LP and the happiest, breeziest song Rufus Wainwright will likely ever write.

The 90s as we knew them were definitively over, but with the internet increasingly dominant, nothing tangible had yet surfaced to completely replace them. Some artists explicitly drew from the past (The Shins’ 1960s-derived garage pop, Ladytron’s 1980s-influenced synthpop) while others both referenced and contemporized it: Daft Punk splicing disco with modern breakbeats, Spoon perhaps the first band to combine edgy post-punk with Fleetwood Mac-derived shadings, Kings of Convenience making like Simon and Garfunkel as if they had been influenced by Belle and Sebastian. Occasionally, something truly original would emerge, like Life Without Buildings’ talky vocalist Sue Tompkins, whom I didn’t even hear until the Spotify age.

Very occasionally, something unexpected would threaten to cross over such as Res’ now-all-but-forgotten hypnotic rock/R&B hybrid, or Cousteau’s loving Bacharach pastiche, which I probably heard on a car commercial before it ever played WERS. But even beyond my own particular, often peculiar tastes (a ten-minute Spiritualized come-down extravaganza? Sure, why not?), you had outfits like The Strokes and The White Stripes breaking out of the indie-rock ghetto. Suddenly, you felt the potential for hundreds of other bands to aspire to the same, and it didn’t yet feel played out. Despite plenty of sociopolitical turmoil by world’s end, there was also an unusual sense of possibility in the air. Ivy’s best-known song (and on some days, best ever single) exuded this promise of renewal. I was ready for it.

2001: We Can Start Over Again

  1. Ben Folds, “Annie Waits”
  2. Pernice Brothers, “7:30”
  3. Res, “They-Say Vision”
  4. Daft Punk, “Digital Love”
  5. Spoon, “Believing is Art”
  6. The Soundtrack of Our Lives, “Sister Surround”
  7. Royal City, “Bad Luck”
  8. Ladytron, “Playgirl”
  9. The Moldy Peaches, “Steak For Chicken”
  10. Super Furry Animals, “It’s Not the End of the World?”
  11. Steve Wynn, “Morningside Heights”
  12. Cousteau, “Last Good Day of the Year”
  13. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, “Under the Hedge”
  14. Depeche Mode, “Dream On”
  15. Basement Jaxx, “Jus 1 Kiss”
  16. Guided By Voices, “Glad Girls”
  17. The Shins, “Know Your Onion!”
  18. Yann Tiersen, “Comptine d’un autre été, l’après-midi”
  19. Bjork, “Pagan Poetry”
  20. The Dirtbombs, “Chains of Love”
  21. Life Without Buildings, “The Leanover”
  22. Ani DiFranco, “Rock Paper Scissors”
  23. Emm Gryner, “Straight to Hell”
  24. Gillian Welch, “Elvis Presley Blues”
  25. Kings of Convenience, “Summer On The Westhill”
  26. New Order, “Close Range”
  27. Belle and Sebastian, “Marx and Engels”
  28. Sam Phillips, “How To Dream”
  29. Rufus Wainwright, “California”
  30. R.E.M., “Imitation of Life”
  31. Roxette, “Real Sugar”
  32. Ivy, “Edge of the Ocean”
  33. Spiritualized, “Won’t Get to Heaven (The State I’m In)”

2000: Tighten Your Buttocks, Pour Juice On Your Chin

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What an odd era for pop music. Y2K having come and gone with barely a whimper, the last traces of the monoculture collectively shrugged. Teens (and more likely preteens) bought into boy bands by the bushelful, boomers made Carlos Santana into a bigger star than he had ever been before and somehow, the dregs of Creed, Lonestar and Vertical Horizon all topped the Hot 100 (as did to be fair Destiny’s Child, Aaliyah, and for the last time, Madonna.) Few exceptional new talents seemed to emerge—just look at Shelby Lynne’s Grammy win for Best New Artist a full six albums into her career, pop-crossover or not.

I kicked off the year 2000 by falling madly in love with another person for the first time, so titles like “I’m Outta Love” and “Leavin’” feel somewhat ironic now (or perhaps just a then-dormant harbinger of what was to come in 2001-2002.) I’ve left out most of the top 40 hits I strongly associate with this time since I no longer go out of my way to listen to many of them; apart from the flop Madonna single (one of her most underrated), very little of this got any radio airplay, at least in the US—“The Time is Now” hit number two in the UK, “Bohemian Like You” was also huge there thanks to its inclusion in a mobile phone ad, while “Tell Me Why” is still Saint Etienne’s (even as a featured artist) only top ten hit in their homeland (their own insanely ambitious single “How We Used To Live”, also from the same year, did not trouble the charts.)

As usual, in a perfect world so many of these songs would’ve been smashes—The New Pornographers’ clarion call (greatly assisted by the incomparable Neko Case), Sleater-Kinney’s peppy, hipster-bashing anthem, PJ Harvey’s irresistible primal stomp, even weirdo duo Ween’s straightest pop song ever. Speaking of weirdos, they’re well represented here too: Bjork’s Dancer in the Dark duet with the lead singer of Radiohead (who themselves that year released possibly the strangest album-to-date to debut at number one), Yo La Tengo’s stoned-and-slowed down cover of an early song co-written by Henry “KC” Casey, and most of all, The Avalanches’ sui generis cut-and-paste extravaganza which I’d argue no one has since surpassed in terms of pure invention and wit.

It’s worth noting that in 2000, I spent a lot more time clubbing than I have before or since, hence the inclusion of an epic Toni Braxton remix with its unusual but masterful extended flamenco breakdown. This exact version instantly brings back many a Saturday night spent dancing at the old Man Ray in Cambridge’s Central Square, sipping sugary cocktails and shamelessly making out on the dancefloor. Oh, I was so young and innocent back then…

2000: Tighten Your Buttocks, Pour Juice On Your Chin

  1. The Dandy Warhols, “Bohemian Like You”
  2. Anastacia, “I’m Outta Love”
  3. Shelby Lynne, “Leavin’”
  4. Aimee Mann, “Satellite”
  5. Moloko, “The Time is Now”
  6. Sleater-Kinney, “You’re No Rock N’ Roll Fun”
  7. Paul van Dyk with Saint Etienne, “Tell Me Why (The Riddle)”
  8. Bjork and Thom Yorke, “I’ve Seen It All”
  9. Ween, “Even If You Don’t”
  10. Madonna, “What It Feels Like For a Girl”
  11. Toni Braxton, “Spanish Guitar (HQ2 Club Mix)”
  12. Blur, “Music is My Radar”
  13. Yo La Tengo, “You Can Have It All”
  14. Belle and Sebastian, “Don’t Leave the Light On Baby”
  15. Bebel Gilberto, “August Day Song”
  16. Nelly Furtado, “Party”
  17. PJ Harvey, “This is Love”
  18. Badly Drawn Boy, “Bewilderbeast”
  19. The Avalanches, “Frontier Psychiatrist”
  20. Stew, “Cavity”
  21. The Weakerthans, “My Favourite Chords”
  22. Calexico, “Service and Repair”
  23. Air, “Playground Love”
  24. Sade, “By Your Side”
  25. k.d. lang, “When We Collide”
  26. The 6ths feat. Katharine Whalen, “You You You You You”
  27. Saint Etienne, “How We Used to Live”
  28. Patti Smith, “Glitter In Their Eyes”
  29. Morcheeba, “Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day”
  30. The New Pornographers, “Letter From an Occupant”
  31. Jill Sobule, “Rock Me to Sleep”

1999: When It Costs Too Much To Love

Chris Kriofske3 Comments

I kicked off 1999 not with that Prince song (the Chicago bar I attended that New Year’s Eve played the intro before its patrons verbally demanded a cease-and-desist) but by falling deep into 1996’s If You’re Feeling Sinister, a premonition. This was one of the more disjointed and new music-deficient years of my life. Between stumbling across the finish line of grad school and desperately seeking steady employment, I took a four month long mental health break from doing much of anything (“A Summer Wasting”, if you will), leaving me with no money to spend on music. I adapted accordingly, raiding a plethora of suburban libraries to acquire previously unheard (i.e.—old) stuff ripe for discovery (Nina Simone, Serge Gainsbourg, Os Mutantes, etc.) Still, even if I had had the cash, it’s not like I’d have been rushing out to buy any of the year’s best-sellers.

What endures from this transitional period is something of a grab bag. We have tracks from both long-beloved artists—a sweet sigh from Everything But The Girl’s last album (until 2023!), Aimee Mann’s Magnolia soundtrack triumph, another indelibly-titled Pet Shop Boys single—and good stuff I didn’t hear until much later: Le Tigre’s unstoppable party anthem (not fully appreciated by me until its inclusion in the 2006 film Reprise), Super Furry Animals’ Tropicalia-by-way-of-Wales, The Negro Problem essaying a heavenly ballad leader Stew would include in his Tony-winning musical nearly a decade later. And yet, I recognize selections I knew and loved at the time, like the lead-off track to Beth Orton’s mostly forgotten second album, Ben Folds Five’s flop follow-up to “Brick” (how did their label think that could be a hit in the mook-rock era?!), Blondie’s underrated (in the US, anyway) reunion single and an Indigo Girls tune that didn’t trouble the pop charts but received heavy rotation on Boston’s WBOS (then a decent Triple-A station).

Of course, I was never going to hear The Magnetic Fields or Sleater-Kinney without actively seeking them out. Same goes for Jason Falkner, whose second LP Can You Still Feel was a lucky library find not long after its release. As for Fiona Apple’s impossibly-titled second album (which I picked up in early 2000), today it less resembles 1999 than an ongoing future/past/present, even on such heavily indebted-to-the-past (in this case, the Beatles and the Great American Songbook) three-minute masterworks like “Paper Bag”.

1999: When It Costs Too Much To Love

  1. Le Tigre, “Deceptacon”
  2. Beth Orton, “Stolen Car”
  3. Jason Falkner, “The Plan”
  4. Everything But The Girl, “No Difference”
  5. Supergrass, “Moving”
  6. Fiona Apple, “Paper Bag”
  7. Pet Shop Boys, “You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You’re Drunk”
  8. Tom Waits, “Hold On”
  9. Tori Amos, “Bliss”
  10. Aimee Mann, “Save Me”
  11. Steve Wynn, “Cats and Dogs”
  12. Ben Folds Five, “Army”
  13. The Magnetic Fields, “All My Little Words”
  14. Hedwig and the Angry Inch, “Wicked Little Town”
  15. Blur, “Coffee and TV”
  16. Indigo Girls, “Peace Tonight”
  17. Fountains of Wayne, “Red Dragon Tattoo”
  18. Meshell Ndegeocello, “Bitter”
  19. Moby, “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?”
  20. Sleater-Kinney, “Don’t Talk Like”
  21. Blondie, “Maria”
  22. Super Furry Animals, “Northern Lites”
  23. Guster, “Fa Fa”
  24. Ani DiFranco, “Everest”
  25. Roxette, “Wish I Could Fly”
  26. Delirium feat. Sarah McLachlan, “Silence”
  27. Cibo Matto, “Spoon”
  28. Emm Gryner, “Disco Lights”
  29. Dido, “Here With Me”
  30. The Negro Problem, “Come Down Now”
  31. Madonna, “Beautiful Stranger”
  32. The Chemical Brothers, “Let Forever Be”
  33. R.E.M., “The Great Beyond”

1998: I Am Not Jesus, Though I Have The Same Initials

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Pulp’s This is Hardcore was a hangover of a follow-up to their celebrated LP Different Class from two years before, and it’s emblematic of the time when it came out. Although never a single, “Dishes” instantly impressed me, and not just for its indelible opening lyric quoted above (only Jarvis Cocker would dare to make such a comparison.) Later, he sings, “A man once told me, beware of 33 / He said, ‘It was a not an easy time for me.’” I was 23 in 1998, but I could still relate—it was my first full year in Boston and I spent all of it in the graduate student interzone, with my life almost entirely focused on academia. Apart from my classes, I was alone most of the time.

As a film studies student, movies admittedly supplanted music as an art form to obsess over, although the latter barely diminished as a presence in my life. Not having cable/MTV and deliberately avoiding the top 40, I relied on Boston’s WFNX (by far the more diverse of the city’s two alt-rock stations) to discover some new music—I first heard “History Repeating”, “Lights are Changing” and “Slimcea Girl” there (and would likely never know the last one otherwise.) And with that, I was off on my own, feverishly awaiting new recordings from artists I already adored (Saint Etienne, PJ Harvey, Morcheeba, Tori Amos) and looking beyond commercial radio for new-to-me sounds from the past in the guise of college radio stations like WERS (an entirely different animal from what it is today) and WMBR.

Looking over this list now, I can’t find any rhyme or reason to it. I’ve gone on about alt-rock entering a rapid decline in the late ’90s, but this might be one of the last great years for top 40 pop as well: REM, Seal, Madonna and Sheryl Crow, as well as endearing electronica (remember that term?) novelties (Fatboy Slim, Stardust.) Note all the great one-offs too, from Komeda’s Stereolab-gone-pop to Billy Bragg and Wilco’s historic Woody Guthrie collab. I can even spot a few first-timers that will heavily figure into these playlists over the next decade and beyond: Canadian singer-songwriter Emm Gryner with an anthem from her only major label album; fellow Canadian singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright making quite the splash on his attention-getting debut; Calexico’s mariachi-inflected noir solidifying on a highlight from their second full-length.

Finally, one day I will write a longer essay on Massive Attack’s Mezzanine as I currently listen to it more than any other album from this year except for Good Humor. 

1998: I Am Not Jesus, Though I Have The Same Initials

  1. Propellerheads feat. Miss Shirley Bassey, “History Repeating”
  2. Emm Gryner, “Summerlong”
  3. Rufus Wainwright, “April Fools”
  4. Pernice Brothers, “Clear Spot”
  5. Mary Lou Lord, “Lights are Changing”
  6. Saint Etienne, “Sylvie”
  7. Pulp, “Dishes”
  8. Calexico, “Stray”
  9. Lucinda Williams, “Right in Time”
  10. PJ Harvey, “A Perfect Day Elise”
  11. Depeche Mode, “Only When I Lose Myself”
  12. Billy Bragg and Wilco, “California Stars”
  13. Air, “You Make It Easy”
  14. Morcheeba, “Part of the Process”
  15. Komeda, “It’s Alright, Baby”
  16. Black Box Recorder, “Child Psychology”
  17. Tori Amos, “Black-Dove (January)”
  18. Massive Attack, “Dissolved Girl”
  19. Madonna, “Ray of Light”
  20. Liz Phair, “Polyester Bride”
  21. Amy Rigby, “All I Want”
  22. Stardust, “Music Sounds Better With You”
  23. Soul Coughing, “St. Louise Is Listening”
  24. Mono, “Slimcea Girl”
  25. Bonnie Raitt, “Spit of Love”
  26. The Divine Comedy, “The Certainty of Chance”
  27. Ani DiFranco, “Little Plastic Castle”
  28. P.M. Dawn, “Art Deco Halos”
  29. Garbage, “I Think I’m Paranoid”
  30. Fatboy Slim, “Praise You”
  31. Belle & Sebastian, “Slow Graffiti”
  32. Seal, “Lost My Faith”
  33. New Radicals, “Gotta Stay High”
  34. R.E.M., “At My Most Beautiful”
  35. Sheryl Crow, “My Favorite Mistake”

1997: He Won’t Be Home Tonight

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The Great Transitional Year where I upended my life and moved to Boston. Before I did, I heard a lot of Top 40 radio while working a summer retail job (actually, it was an “Adult Top 40” station, which translated as Mostly White Without Rocking Too Hard). I must have listened to Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch”, OMC’s “How Bizarre” and The Wallflowers “One Headlight” (among many others) at least one hundred times each over a three-month period. I’d like to say it soured me off mainstream radio for good, but even without such overexposure, I’m positive those songs still would not have aged well enough to make my playlist below (though I’ve recently come around on the OMC, a harmless novelty when not played to death.)

At this time, I almost entirely stopped putting stock into commercial radio (even mainstream modern rock channels!). Of these 35 songs, the only ones I ever heard on the radio that year were White Town’s brilliant, genderfucked surprise hit, Sarah McLachlan’s last single resembling anything remotely “edgy” and maybe the Cornershop song (the latter probably only on Boston’s then-great indie-rock station WFNX). A few, like “Da Funk”, “Try”, “Stereo” and “She Cries Your Name”, probably came from 120 Minutes. “Smoke” was an exceptional album track from an LP I bought the first week of release, as was Blur’s great “Beetlebum” (number one in the UK but overshadowed in the US by their own surprise novelty hit).

Regardless, I didn’t hear at least one-third of these until post-’97. I’ve already gone on about discovering Ivy four years later; Super Furry Animals, Sleater-Kinney and Teenage Fanclub would also become known to me in that rough period. “Lazy Line Painter Jane” had the most seismic impact in the summer of 2000 when it finally became commercially available in the US, eighteen months after I fell for If You’re Feeling Sinister. ’97 was still mostly pre-internet regarding hearing new music. I can only imagine how different this list might now be if I had YouTube or Spotify at my disposal back then.

On that note, streaming and re-releases are chiefly responsible for bringing the moodier sounds of Luna, Primal Scream, Morphine and Sneaker Pimps back into personal heavy rotation, while current TV series The Bear breathed new life into a standout from Radiohead’s venerated (if not by me at the time) OK Computer. As for former shoegazers Catherine Wheel, their sprightly, sparkling “Satellite” (from their mostly forgotten LP Adam and Eve) wasn’t even a single—not that it would’ve taken airplay away from Third Eye Blind, though one can dream.

1997: He Won’t Be Home Tonight

  1. Cornershop, “Brimful of Asha”
  2. Teenage Fanclub, “Ain’t That Enough”
  3. Jen Trynin, “Getaway (February)”
  4. Blur, “Beetlebum”
  5. Daft Punk, “Da Funk”
  6. Bjork, “Joga”
  7. Ivy, “The Best Thing”
  8. White Town, “Your Woman”
  9. Mansun, “Wide Open Space”
  10. Pavement, “Stereo”
  11. Jill Sobule, “Happy Town”
  12. Sleater-Kinney, “Turn It On”
  13. Super Furry Animals, “Hermann Loves Pauline”
  14. Ben Folds Five, “Smoke”
  15. Steve Wynn, “How’s My Little Girl”
  16. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Into My Arms”
  17. Depeche Mode, “Home”
  18. Catherine Wheel, “Satellite”
  19. Stereolab, “Miss Modular”
  20. Sarah McLachlan, “Sweet Surrender”
  21. Beth Orton, “She Cries Your Name”
  22. Supergrass, “Late in the Day”
  23. Matthew Sweet, “Behind the Smile”
  24. Indigo Girls, “Get Out The Map”
  25. Ween, “Ocean Man”
  26. Michael Penn, “Try”
  27. Primal Scream, “Kowalski”
  28. Luna, “Pup Tent”
  29. Morphine, “Like Swimming”
  30. Portishead, “All Mine”
  31. Sneaker Pimps, “6 Underground”
  32. Radiohead, “Let Down”
  33. k.d. lang, “Till The Heart Caves In”
  34. Yo La Tengo, “Autumn Sweater”
  35. Belle and Sebastian, “Lazy Line Painter Jane”