No, this list still sucks. Because if it is meant to be a compendium of a broad range of American/Western tastes, it should have fucking Nickelback on there.

So, it fails because most of the albums suck AND it fails at what it is trying to be. Double Blech.

If Mississippi Public Radio didn't have a good blues hour, I would argue for cutting funding entirely.

No, to wrap it in a blanket statement, there have absolutely been no jazz records broadly culturally "important" enough to make a list that aims to capture what this one aims to. Not this decade, and arguably not for the couple preceding it either.

This is just a bunch of white boys trying to cover their asses and not offend anyone in particular. As a result, it's an empty gesture: hollow, purposeless, skinless, and ultimately entirely offensive. GAR pretty much nailed it.

It's trying to convey an everyman "mass culture" vibe, but it doesn't truly do that at all, yet at the same time fails to address anything of strictly "artistic" merit.

If its intent were true, where the fuck is MGMT? Where are the Kings of Leon? Surely that was an important breakthrough in modern mass culture (and one gravely overlooked by the jealously snotty-nosed indie press): here you have two rock and roll bands making (at the very least, vaguely) credible music, absolutely dominating the airwaves.

For the past ten years AT LEAST, the only other bands (and I mean proper bands in the traditional sense) to have ridiculous radio airplay are the same kind of emotionally cheap, draining, pathetically self-wallowing dreck: Nickleback, The Foo Fighters, Matchbox Twenty, Green Day, Panic At the Disco (though Kings of Leon have admittedly made a couple of steps in this direction...)

The only song I can think of not fitting this mold from a band proper that was huge, everywhere, is perhaps Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out", and even Franz had no follow up hits that hit the wider population with such vigor.

Everyone tends to forget that despite their wide appeal, bands like the Strokes didn't exactly have any mainstream hits, and the White Stripes only had "Seven Nation Army". Radiohead never dominated mainstream radio this decade.

It's quite a phenomenal thing to watch, you know: a meth'd-out fifteen year-old high school dropout shopping trolley collector with a backwards cap, an eyebrow ring infection and a tacky tribal tattoo jive along to MGMT's "Electric Feel" blasting over a carpark radio at some backwoods any-town shopping mall carpark. It's like we won after all.

That's what's important. Not the fucking Postal Service.

Speaking of "Seven Nation Army" which I have touted on many occasions as the best mainstream rock single of this decade, I find it even more baffling (and awesome) that "Icky Thump" receives a lot of mainstream rock radio airplay: that is one fucked up song, especially the guitar freakout at the end.

There is hope.

I am so fucking tired

i don't think either were as huge in the states as they were elsewhere. They got heard for sure, but hardly dominated anything.

I would feel better if that list had some Modest Mouse, Shins, and some more foreign bands.

I strongly disagree.



Jazz? Not important? But Osvaldo Golijov: La Pasión Segun San Marcos (Saint Mark's Passion) is???

While it was just out the range (August, 1999) Khmer, Nils Pettar Molvaer was more important, imitated, influential than 20-30 of titles on the list… But he is clearly more respected in Europe… there was an enormous amount of great jazz in the last decade, popular and influential. But in keeping with the Americacentric flavor of the list I offer the following at least as “importantâ€

Yeah from KoL's almost ubiquitous use in commercials and TV shows like Entourage to their multi platinum selling last album and sold out arena tours, they were basically invisible in this country.

As for MGMT, I can usually judge a bands impact by whether my friends on Facebook who don't follow music that closely anymore catch on...MGMT passes that test in spades (Ditto Vampire Weekend and for this year, Phoenix)

KoL have had their rifs in commercials, and maybe be used in TV shows, but they didn't really break through here until the last year or two. Their newest album is the first to go gold and to have a single chart. Where as The Strokes have two platinum albums and the White Stripes have three.

Based on the momentum they have in other countries, they might far eclipse both. I'm not saying they weren't big, I'm arguing the italicized dominating.

My first reaction to the list was 46 albums ranging from Meh to Blech to Lomit and 4 Eh **shoulder shrug** not bads

Your comment about their defense made me go read a few though and the handful I choose seemed to just spend a couple of sentences describing the music and then say not only is it influential and important but its a great album. e.g. its important because we like it, no need to explain how an artist who hasn't ever sold 100,000 copies or influenced anyone who has sold 50,000 is important. They instead save the "importance" argument for the handful of artists that clearly have had some cultural impact but don't appeal to indie-centric, nerdy NPR listeners.

List sucks

I would just love to see what some of you think the "most important" albums of the past decade are.

I've never really given it a moment's thought. Outside of obvious, large-scale cultural impact though, importance is something best determined with the benefit of more time.

Not to defend this list or anything - I'm not too fond of it, personally - but how much can we really tear it apart if we're not really sure what it should look like anyway?

bunch of snore inducing reg rock bullshit most likely.

ya know, the shit that's just sorry.

I've never even heard of the #1 record. don't agree with MPP being so high. and where's Broken Social Scene and spoon?

It's alphabetical.

the thread title, and first post numerical listing were misleading.

I expect to see things I don't like on a list like this including AC and Radiohead. I think a case be easily made for why they are important. I didn't read those entries so I don't know that they made it. I read the entries for things I neither like nor hate that don't seem particularly that important to me (e.g. Bon Iver, Bright Eyes, Sufjan Stevens, Decemberists, Deathcab for Cutie, Iron & Wine, Flaming Lips). I think Deathcab is the only one that they made any attempt to explain the importance of and it was that the title track appeared in a lot of tv teen dramas. Seriously?

It appears to be a list of 5-10 albums they genuinely think are important for some identifiable reason and 40-45 that they like therefore it must be important. Its the later ones I have a problem with.

Yeah, I didn't catch it right away.

Yeah, i'm surprised about MM. Basically they broke out, and then CYHSY made a shitty carbon copy, and they get the nod? huh?!!

In the punk "scene" when Against Me! "sold out" with New Wave it caused a major commotion. Not sure if it impacted the mainstream at all (other than the minor ripples of more widespread popularity).

the CYHSY is one of the few i read that they actually made a case for based on importance - the viral marketing campaign and unprecedented(?) 125,000 for a self-released album with no real marketing $ behind. I'm not sure it deserves to be on there but at least they made an effort on that one.

I thought CYHSY was a carbon copy of Arcade Fire.

Yeah, a bunch of bands i don't care for are ones i'm okay with being on the list for their story. CYHSY being one of them.

Of course the blogs turning on them as quickly as they propped them up are part of the importance of their story.