Ten Years Gone

It may be hard to believe but there are less than six months left in this decade. Soon, we’ll all be met with a barrage of lists. Everything from “The Top 100 Celebrity Marriages of the 2000s” to “The Top 50 Romantic Comedies of the 2000s” to “The Top 20 Fashion Mistakes of the 2000s!” Oh what we have to look forward to!!

But of course, we can also expect all kinds of interesting music lists as well. If there’s one thing that music journalists can’t live without, it’s “definitive” lists. I’ll be sure to see what Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Uncut, Metacritc etc. have to offer when these things are released in a little while but before I become biased by these publications, I plan to make a list of my own. Yes, my summer music project here on Page 43 will be going through all 112 albums I own from this decade and narrowing it down to the best ten. It may be too hard to rank this top echelon from 1 to 10, but I will decide as I get closer to finishing.

Here is the alphabetical list of the albums I own from the current millennium thus far. I’m sure I’ll add a few more on before the year is up but hopefully not too many as I have enough on my plate as it is. The one danger of doing something like this in the middle of the year is the possibility of the next Sgt. Pepper’s being released in October. If this happens, I will be painfully forced to edit the list. Nonetheless, I think this will be a fun project and the summer months suit such a conquest best.

Before I begin this, I guess I’ll try to briefly sum up the decade from a musical perspective. In terms of what artist instantly comes to mind associated with each decade, I’ll say the 60s=Beatles, the 70s=Zeppelin, the 80s=U2, the 90s=Nirvana and the 00s=Death Cab for Cutie. These aren't always my favorite artists from each decade but their image and style seems to best represent the decade as far as rock and roll is concerned. Why Death Cab for the zeroes? They define “indie” while being tremendously popular. As access to music has gotten easier for all thanks to technology, being universally popular has become even more difficult and hence, “indie” is the way to go. Maybe I’m not quite impartial being a Seattleite, but it seems to me that nobody screams “indie” better than Gibbard, Walla, Harmer and McGerr. Just my opinion though. Feel free not too get heated over this as there are probably as many ideas on "what artists define any given decade" as there are sand grains on the beach.

I didn’t intend this post to be all about Death Cab and what exactly indie is. That may be a good post for the future. But for now, I’d like to say something I never would’ve imagined saying five years ago: it has been truly a great decade for music! I will have a hard time narrowing down my favorites records but I’m really excited to go through and listen to music that my generation put out!! I’m ridiculously tired of middle age people saying “Oh wow, that takes me back! What are you doing listening to that?” when I mention who some of my favorite artists are (Beatles, Floyd, CSNY etc.). Well, I’m ready to take a headfirst plunge into the artists of Generation Y and I encourage you to do so as well. A lot has happened since Y2K and I’m sure that many of these records will be playing more in decades to come.

*Last week's heading was from Michael Jackson's "Off The Wall."