100 Albums

My Top 100 Albums of the 21st Century

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Since coming up with my own list of 100 favorite films of this century to date, it’s inevitable I’d want to do the same for albums. During my 100 Albums project some years back, I said I’d never rank them, but those were all-time favorites to date; I can handle ranking a quarter century. Either way, I’ve included links to the 37 titles that were part of that project.

As for these rankings, like the film list, the top 30 or so is based on how I feel about each album right now—how much I return to it, how much I want to return to it. My number one in 2025 would have been the same in 2020, 2015 or 2010; the rest of the top ten is aligned with those periods as well, obviously apart from the entry that came out in 2023 and maybe Hometime, which I’ve always loved but whose presence in my life has grown exponentially in recent years (as did Riot On An Empty Street roughly a decade ago.) Rankings below #30 or so are even more intuitive although I was surprised to see Local Valley so high as it came in at a mere #7 on my top albums list of 2021.

As for metrics, four artists appear with three albums each (Sam Phillips, Saint Etienne, Kings of Convenience, Tracey Thorn—four for her if you count Fuse) and an additional thirteen have more than one slot. The most common years to appear are 2003 and 2004 when I was in my late 20s, writing for a music website and absorbing so much stuff. That more than half of these entries are from the 2000’s I can only chalk up to my age or perhaps having had more time to live with and retain them. Ideally, if I did this exercise in another 25 years for a half-century of music, the 2010’s and 2020’s would have just as much representation. Also, ask me to formulate another list like this in a year or two and don’t be surprised if it shifts all over the place.

  1. Since I Left You (The Avalanches, 2000)
  2. Fan Dance (Sam Phillips, 2001)
  3. Aerial (Kate Bush, 2005)
  4. Tales From Turnpike House (Saint Etienne, 2005)
  5. Black Rainbows (Corinne Bailey Rae, 2023)
  6. Oceans Apart (The Go-Betweens, 2005)
  7. Riot On An Empty Street (Kings of Convenience, 2004)
  8. Feast of Wire (Calexico, 2003)
  9. Kaputt (Destroyer, 2011)
  10. Hometime (Alison Moyet, 2002)
  11. Music For The Age of Miracles (The Clientele, 2017)
  12. Northern Gospel (Emm Gryner, 2011)
  13. Here Come The Miracles (Steve Wynn, 2001)
  14. Home Counties (Saint Etienne, 2017)
  15. Out Of The Woods (Tracey Thorn, 2007)
  16. Queens Of The Summer Hotel (Aimee Mann, 2021)
  17. What’s Your Pleasure? (Jessie Ware, 2020)
  18. Record (Tracey Thorn, 2018)
  19. 5:55 (Charlotte Gainsbourg, 2006)
  20. Edge Of The Sun (Calexico, 2015)
  21. Random Access Memories (Daft Punk, 2013)
  22. Seven Swans (Sufjan Stevens, 2004)
  23. Bachelor No. 2 (Aimee Mann, 2000)
  24. The Naked Dutch Painter and Other Songs (Stew, 2002)
  25. Get Away From Me! (Nellie McKay, 2004)
  26. The Facts of Life (Black Box Recorder, 2001)
  27. Phantom Power (Super Furry Animals, 2003)
  28. Lil’ Beethoven (Sparks, 2002)
  29. Don’t Do Anything (Sam Phillips, 2008)
  30. Fuse (Everything But The Girl, 2023)
  31. My Finest Work Yet (Andrew Bird, 2019)
  32. Tales Of Us (Goldfrapp, 2016)
  33. Reconstruction Site (Weakerthans, 2003)
  34. Want One (Rufus Wainwright, 2003)
  35. Local Valley (Jose Gonzalez, 2021)
  36. The Hair, The TV, The Baby and The Band (Imperial Teen, 2007)
  37. Guest Host (Stew, 2000)
  38. New Pagan Love Song (Paul Brill, 2004)
  39. Weather Alive (Beth Orton, 2022)
  40. Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt (Tompaulin, 2004)
  41. I Speak Because I Can (Laura Marling, 2010)
  42. Lungs (Florence + the Machine, 2009)
  43. OOOH! (Out of Our Heads) (Mekons, 2002)
  44. Chutes Too Narrow (Shins, 2003)
  45. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (Big Thief, 2022)
  46. Running Out of Love (The Radio Dept., 2016)
  47. I Know What Love Isn’t (Jens Lekman, 2012)
  48. Froot (Marina and The Diamonds, 2015)
  49. Declaration of Dependence (Kings of Convenience, 2009)
  50. Overpowered (Roisin Murphy, 2007)
  51. One Beat (Sleater-Kinney, 2002)
  52. Christine and the Queens (Christine and the Queens, 2015)
  53. Words and Music By Saint Etienne (Saint Etienne, 2012)
  54. A Girl Called Eddy (A Girl Called Eddy, 2004)
  55. Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia (The Dandy Warhols, 2000)
  56. I Am Not There Anymore (The Clientele, 2023)
  57. Singles (Future Islands, 2014)
  58. Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea (PJ Harvey, 2000)
  59. Twin Cinema (New Pornographers, 2005)
  60. Time (The Revelator) (Gillian Welch, 2001)
  61. Island (Owen Pallett, 2020)
  62. So This Is Goodbye (Junior Boys, 2006)
  63. Business & Pleasure (Emm Gryner, 2023)
  64. My Light, My Destroyer (Cassandra Jenkins, 2024)
  65. Armchair Apocrypha (Andrew Bird, 2007)
  66. In Our Heads (Hot Chip, 2012)
  67. Obligatory Villagers (Nellie McKay, 2007)
  68. The ArchAndroid (Janelle Monae, 2010)
  69. Beauty & Crime (Suzanne Vega, 2007)
  70. Stone Rollin’ (Raphael Saadiq, 2011)
  71. Mid Air (Romy, 2023)
  72. Scarlet’s Walk (Tori Amos, 2002)
  73. Behind The Music (The Soundtrack Of Our Lives, 2001)
  74. Songs Of A Lost World (The Cure, 2024)
  75. Love & Hate (Michael Kiwanuka, 2016)
  76. Dottie’s Charms (Jill Sobule, 2014)
  77. Love and Its Opposite (Tracey Thorn, 2010)
  78. Stand For Myself (Yola, 2021)
  79. Bebel Gilberto (Bebel Gilberto, 2004)
  80. Dear Catastrophe Waitress  (Belle & Sebastian, 2003)
  81. Faded Seaside Glamour (Delays, 2004)
  82. Z (My Morning Jacket, 2005)
  83. Hairless Toys (Roisin Murphy, 2015)
  84. Modern Vampires of the City (Vampire Weekend, 2013)
  85. Goodnight Rhonda Lee (Nicole Atkins, 2017)
  86. E*MO*TION (Carly Rae Jepsen, 2015)
  87. Quiet Is The New Loud (Kings of Convenience, 2001)
  88. D-D-Don’t Stop The Beat (Junior Senior, 2003)
  89. One Life Stand (Hot Chip, 2010)
  90. A Boot And A Shoe (Sam Phillips, 2004)
  91. Blackstar (David Bowie, 2016)
  92. Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance (Belle & Sebastian, 2015)
  93. Come On Feel The Illinoise! (Sufjan Stevens, 2005)
  94. Heartthrob (Tegan & Sara, 2013)
  95. Poses (Rufus Wainwright, 2001)
  96. The Idler Wheel… (Fiona Apple, 2012)
  97. Transatlanticism (Death Cab For Cutie, 2003)
  98. The Evangelist (Robert Forster, 2008)
  99. Night Falls Over Kortedala (Jens Lekman, 2007)
  100. The Slow Wonder (A.C. Newman, 2004)

100 Albums: Epilogue

Chris KriofskeLeave a comment

A few of my 100 favorite albums are currently in this crate.

 

Why did I write one hundred essays on my favorite albums, in chronological order from Revolver to Record? When I began this project five years and one month ago, I saw it as a constructive way to write more extensively about music, and also as an opportunity to get used to working on longer pieces in general. I figured I could complete a thousand-word essay a week and get to the finish line within a little over two years.

And I more or less kept up the pace until I got to album number 6, Abbey Road—a record I had far more than a thousand words to write about. Once I reached the ‘90s in my timeline, I encountered many albums that, due to when I first heard them or what presence they’ve continually maintained in my life, required far more time and attention to assess than I initially expected, to the point that at the two-year mark, I was only halfway through the entire project.

Now that I’ve finally completed it, I feel a sense of having accomplished something, but what, beyond finishing what I set out to do? I’ve left a record of my taste in music as it stands over this half-decade (go back to my 2004 list to see how it has shifted); I’ve also continually drawn connections between albums from nearly every notch on this half-century-plus timeline up to the final entry (thank you, Tracey Thorn, for injecting into your own Record a song title from Songs of Leonard Cohen!)

Throughout, I kept revising the initial list I came up with in 2014. My original end point was Random Access Memories, an ideal choice given its fixation on channeling past sounds into contemporary and possible future ones. However, it ended up at #94, which allowed me to include six more titles released after it. What happened to the six older albums I left off? Apart from the Mekons’ OOOH! (Out Of Our Heads) (I still wonder why I nixed that one; was it too similar to Sleater-Kinney’s contemporaneous One Beat?), I honestly can’t recall what they were (my original list is sadly lost to time.) I occasionally replaced one album with another from the same artist: Dig Me Out and All Hands On The Bad One were candidates instead of One Beat at various points, and I kept going back and forth between Scarlet’s Walk and Boys For Pele for Tori Amos before deciding I had more to say about the latter (mostly because it’s nuts.)

Still, as I made my way through 100 Albums, it gradually dawned on me that this project had a certain flaw: By writing only about records that I loved, I was in danger of lapsing into hagiography. Truthfully, I’ve always felt more comfortable dissecting art I was drawn to than stuff I found repulsive or that simply left me cold—I’m a fan/geek more than a critic where music’s concerned (film criticism, on the other hand, I have a graduate degree in.) While it was often fun reviewing records on a weekly basis for a website back in 2003-04, a majority of them were so awful, when I left that gig, I was elated to go back to focusing on albums I genuinely liked.

The other difficult aspect of writing essays about your 100 favorite albums is that before long, you are inevitably prone to repeating yourself: How many different ways can you say something is good and make a sound critical argument as to why others should listen to it? I’ve tried my best to confront this challenge and write criticism that comes from an honest point-of-view. I haven’t gone back and re-read every last entry in this project, but I can single out ten that I think are, at the very least (to quote Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-n-Furter in Rocky Horror Picture Show), pretty groovaay:

The Beatles, “Abbey Road”
Joni Mitchell, “Hejira”
Concrete Blonde, “Bloodletting”
R.E.M., “Automatic For The People”
Saint Etienne, “So Tough”
Ivy, “Apartment Life”
The Avalanches, “Since I Left You”
Sam Phillips, “Fan Dance”
Tompaulin, “Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt”
Kate Bush, “Aerial”

It helps that every one of these ten would probably make a top 25 if I had to rank the entire list*, but another common thread runs through them: they are among my most personal essays here. I repeatedly found myself enjoying the writing process more when I was able to lead off or build a piece around a reminiscence or an anecdote directly related to an album, one that could help flesh out or even unlock what meaning this particular piece of art had for me.

I can firmly say there will never be a likeminded follow-up to 100 Albums: No 100 Films, 100 Books, 100 TV shows, etc. Putting aside the danger and difficulty that comes with only writing about beloved art, I’ve gradually discovered throughout this project that I have other, more important things to write about (even if I now regret not including Cosmic Thing by The B-52’s or anything by Steely Dan, among other artists.) Haunted Jukebox will continue, but its primary focus will no longer be music. Oh, there will be mixes (annual and otherwise), year-end lists and likely a decade-end album list in early 2020, but I’m ready to move on from criticism into more personal terrain. Thanks to anyone following and/or invested in this project.

 

* In 100 Albums: An Introduction, I said I’d do this upon the project’s completion, but since rankings of all-time lists are so prone to fluctuation, I’m leaving it up to each reader’s perception as to what my favorite, favorite albums are.

50 Down, 50 To Go

Chris KriofskeLeave a comment

Almost exactly two years ago, I began 100 Albums simply to give myself both a reason to write and a goal to accomplish. Summing up an album in 1,000 words each week initially seemed doable; however, I soon discovered I could easily write closer to twice that length (sometimes more) about particular records, but needed more time to do so. Two years on, and I’ve reached not my original goal, but rather serendipitously the halfway mark.

I chose to write about my favorite albums chronologically, hoping it would allow me to develop an ongoing narrative about how both music and my personal taste has evolved. While there’s not much linking such disparate records as Future Listening! and It’s Heavy In Here together apart from coming out in the same year, if you go to any random entry (particularly past the first ten), you’ll see plenty of links referring to earlier entries. When I write criticism, I usually fall back on that (admittedly useful) trope of comparing and contrasting. Here, it’s especially useful in tracking how one piece of music informs another; I can only see it continuing throughout the remaining 50 entries.

Speaking of which, I suspect it will take longer than two more years to get through them. For starters, I’m off on a brief hiatus to focus on other endeavors, but in general, I find myself increasingly challenged to make each new entry fresh and not a rehash of ideas already explored. As I look over the list (that I’m continuously revising, by the way), I see great opportunities to expand and deepen this partial narrative, so I’m going to take time to put in the effort and keep the bar for myself set high. 100 Albums will continue, but don’t be surprised if the pace slackens intermittently.

When this project (eventually) returns, it will enter 1996 with one of the great Difficult Third Albums. Until then, click here for a playlist of songs from the last 50 albums (with a few substitutions for those records not on Spotify). Also embedded above: a brief history of how we got from there to here as summed up by XTC’s Andy Partridge.