Most influential bands/artists of 2005-2015 today

Got into an interesting discussion with a friend recently about which artists from 10-20 years ago have had the greatest impact on today's popular music landscape. Or another way you might ask the question: Which artists from that period were ten years ahead of their time?

My immediate inclination was Animal Collective, though, I couldn't think of any bands that sound much like Animal Collective.

He suggested Fleet Foxes, which I questioned. Yet, in the car today, a Noah Kahan/Hozier record came on that was a dead ringer for Fleet Foxes. Maybe the Lumineers or Ed Sheeran are more obvious progenitors to this sound?

Rap is admittedly confounding to me. I'd have said Drake a few years ago, now I'm not so sure. Which rappers of that era do you still hear today?

Bon Iver seems to be a real touchpoint for many of our biggest artists, from Taylor Swift to Zach Bryan. And Taylor herself can be heard in some corners of pop, e.g., Olivia Rodrigo, Gracie Abrams.

With Morgan Wallen occupying so much of the Billboard Hot 100, there's likely an argument to be made for some country artists, but I'm not sure which make sense: Eric Church? Luke Bryan? Kenny Chesney? Like Kendrick, I think of Wallen as reaching back to the 90s more than referencing music of 10-20 years ago.

Thoughts?

Wow--I don't know if I'm less able to answer this on the influenced or the influencer side of the question.

Kanye West

from a UK perspective the pop music of the era, especially the grime-lite and EDM that dominated the charts around 2010, seems to be totally irrelevant now, as does much of the bass music, especially dubstep. What we can still hear though is

* Annoyingly vocally affected singers with what I call the "poor wickle puppy voice" - I blame Passenger's "Let Her Go" for being ground zero here, but there are many precidents
* Commercial D&B had a resurgence around 2011, and has only got bigger since then, it's even crossing the Atlantic with Baddadan now
* PC Music / hyperpop has been very influential on mainstream pop, thanks mainly to Charli it seems to be everywhere now, and one of the main reasons that 2020s pop just sounds better than 2010s pop

yeah I was gonna say Black Midi (re: that 3rd point)

for rap: kanye, future, thug, chief keef, gucci mane, lil wayne. basically everyone making rap music today is descended from one of those guys.

xxp PC Music is a good call

When I look at the top ten Spotify rap artists right now, most of them were making music in that time period (Kendrick, Drake, Eminem, Kanye, etc.). Travis Scott and Post Malone are the only real newcomers.

Post Malone's main precursor is Malone, and before him Pre Malone.

aka Bugsy

predating this timeframe slightly but Max Tundra's 2000-2002 sounds/vibes are all over the place

Kelly Clarkson "Since U Been Gone"

"Hollaback Girl" and "ATP" have to be some sort of cousins.

Tim & Nelly "Over and over" opening up the genrebending landscape for Shaboozey, Lil Nas X and even Beyonce

M83's first record seems to still be insanely popular based on the Gen Z shoegazey/synthwoozy opening bands I've caught in the last few years.

yeah I did not get the fuss around M83 at the time and I don't get it now, but it has been massive

Lana Del Rey

lol @ "ATP", i'm admittedly not a tennis watcher and retain a little knowledge of adenosine triphosphate... I meant "APT"

1st M83 album is def a good call

I am 100% out of touch with any current music and have no place responding to this thread, but...

Based on random things that show up on my YouTube, has there been any lasting influence from the extreme harmony singing of the TikTok sea shanty craze?

The most surprising “this is super popular in 2025” thing for me is emo, I thought we’d be listening to Animal Collective et al forever, not so much Fall Out Boy et al. This observation is passing judgement on neither band/genre… I’m just surprised is all. Emo always seemed like “punk plus boy band” to me, its longevity has surprised me, and not in an unpleasant way

surely there's a vaporwave album that fits here, probably not Floral Shoppe or Eccojams but maybe virtua.zip. it's not quite as evolved as say the first Blank Banshee album or I'll Try Living Like This but it def feels like one of those "hey I could do this" things that you hear a lot of echoes of today

@fgti: was emo a thing in 2005-2015?

i know Julien Baker covered Jawbreaker in 2016:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uxT0z-TDEk

xps Emo and pop-punk were *huge* for my specific age cohort and younger, to an extent that I did not really appreciate until recently, having spent my teens and early adult years in a hipster music bubble. I was at a wedding a few weeks ago of some friends who are in their late 20s, and the DJ's setlist was jam-packed with FOB, MCR, early Paramore and the like. Much of it I didn't know at all, but I sure was surrounded by folks on the dancefloor belting every word. In other words, it doesn't surprise me in the least

OTOH, the resurgence/reappraisal/influence of nu-metal does surprise me, though I think it is mainly being done by Gen Z-ers who weren't there to appreciate just how rancid were the vibes

just thought of:

Tinariwen

without them Mdou Moctar, Tamikrest, Imarhan, Les Amazones d'Afrique, Songhoy Blues & TissilaWen may not have the reach they'd have otherwise.

maybe Konono no1 too, still hearing Congotronics popping up in lots of the Ngeyengeye universe.

JFC... "nyegengeye"

lol i give up

It's also hard to overstate the influence of producers like Madlib and Dilla (though both slightly predate this period), if not on mainstream hip-hop, then certainly on the underground, and a whole generation of bedroom producers

...and on what would become (for better or worse) the whole "lo fi beats to chill/study to" thing.

for rap: kanye, future, thug, chief keef, gucci mane, lil wayne. basically everyone making rap music today is descended from one of those guys.

― gestures broadly at...everything (voodoo chili), Tuesday, June 24, 2025 12:08 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This about covers it

It's also hard to overstate the influence of producers like Madlib and Dilla (though both slightly predate this period), if not on mainstream hip-hop, then certainly on the underground, and a whole generation of bedroom producers

― feed me with your chips (zchyrs), Tuesday, June 24, 2025 2:53 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

dilla and madlib have had a pretty big influence on modern jazz, too (thru descendants like flying lotus and kassa overall)

xp i'll throw in the odd future heavy-hitters: tyler, the creator, earl sweatshirt, frank ocean.

I would say in the non-rap world: Frank Ocean, Lana Del Ray and Mitski.

I think Sophie might end up in there in the long run

xp i'll throw in the odd future heavy-hitters: tyler, the creator, earl sweatshirt, frank ocean.

― gestures broadly at...everything (voodoo chili), Tuesday, June 24, 2025 4:06 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Nah, you had it right the first time. Tyler is just doing the Kanye playbook in his own way.

Let us hope he doesn't follow it any further

wym?

https://d1fs2x8pjgwjnh.cloudfront.net/app/uploads/2015/10/tyler-the-creator-buffalo-music-video-640x426.png

there's a whole crew of underground artists emulating earl at the moment, tho obviously his tradition reaches back further.

frank ocean has inspired r&b's move away from uptempo crowd-pleasers and towards introverted confessionalism

the latter is not good influence imo lol

drake also feels more influential on modern r&b than modern rap

http://www.thrashermagazine.com/images/image/Junkdrawer/2016/02/Demarco_Intro_1500px.jpg

Frank and Tyler also set up fragmented and asymmetrical songs that gave some context to "Sicko Mode" and "Bad Guy" when those became top-10 hits. ("Fertilizer" is the catchiest song on Channel Orange but only lasts 39 seconds, and much of Flower Boy and IGOR feel satisfying/unsatisfying for similar reasons.)

This discussion goes well with the 'Is culture/fashion in a permanent holding pattern?' thread. An unusual amount of the really big and popular acts today were also big and popular 2005-15. So any one of them.

But you can't really call that 'ahead of their time'. Drake was of his time in 2010, and he is still of his time in 2025. If we're trying to find someone 'ahead of their time', who weren't big and popular then, but have ended up being really influential, I too think the answer is PC Music.

A special case: It's kinda weird that DJ Mustard was massive 10-15 years ago, then sorta went away for a decade, and is now making his biggest hits ever.

I remember when PC Music came out a few people here called it out as being clearly influenced by Max Tundra. I keep expecting his records to get rediscovered some day. Parallax Error being from 2008 still blows my mind, even though I distinctly remember it coming out I would've said like 2013 or something

The new CocoJoey album sounds a lot like Max Tundra too. He would be a good answer too, I just think of him more as an early 00s sound.

A total off-beat influence I keep hearing in modern things is Pulseprogramming, but not sure if this guy was just super ahead of his time rather than influential:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q10rIVwvJ8w

(from 2002-2003 so slightly predates the timeframe criteria in this thread)

It's also hard to overstate the influence of producers like Madlib and Dilla (though both slightly predate this period), if not on mainstream hip-hop, then certainly on the underground, and a whole generation of bedroom producers

― feed me with your chips (zchyrs), Tuesday, June 24, 2025 2:53 PM (eleven minutes ago)

Nujabes as well.

A special case: It's kinda weird that DJ Mustard was massive 10-15 years ago, then sorta went away for a decade, and is now making his biggest hits ever.

Reminds me of Pharell and the Neptunes being huge in the early 2000s, kinda disappearing for a while, and then reemerging in 2013 with some of his biggest hits.

for rap: kanye, future, thug, chief keef, gucci mane, lil wayne. basically everyone making rap music today is descended from one of those guys.

― gestures broadly at...everything (voodoo chili), Tuesday, June 24, 2025 12:08 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I would add Nicki here, as she seems like a touch point for a lot of female rappers.

Also, pop radio is still full of whoa-ohhhs and Ho Heys. And Taylor wannabes.

Amy Winehouse

The Lady Gaga sound/attitude still all over radio

the most influential on rap music right now other than the aforementioned is prolly jeezy + drich production specifically + bankroll fresh who built on that, late 00s atlanta stuff (although thug/future/keef are all steeped in that stuff theyre just like the stars who emerged from that stew or w/e)

iIthink 'regional dance musics' esp jersey club & chicago footwork stuff (for example) has continued to permeate youth culture across the spectrum, def the rhythmic template that is most relevant ... also jungle and garage ... of course all that stuff predates 2005 but it feels like its at the forefront for genz in a way four-on-the-floor type rhythms are much more 'mainstream' or 'millennial' coded

well footwork doesnt predate 2005 per se but stuff like this is closer to juke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMkLc-yLvr4

Deej OTM

Thinking about say animal collective’s influence versus emo’s influence as discussed upthread.

I think what has changed is not the resilience or influence of particular sounds or approaches so much as how “we” organise them in our conception of popular music as in dialogue with itself and with the past.

Circa 2008/2009 was probably the apotheosis of the era/tendency of conceiving of indie-rock as the great waypoint or thoroughfare through which different musical ideas and approaches passed in order to communicate with one another (for simplicity we could call this the Pitchfork Vantage Point - which the publication itself has largely abandoned alongside everyone else).

This conception of indie has basically disappeared now: there are of course bands and artists working in or adjacent to that space musically but we conceive of them similarly to how we conceive of artists dabbling in jazz or Motown or disco or etc - it’s a choice about how the present can interrogate the past but not what which is afforded any particular significance or centrality.

When I think of music from this year that shares ideas or motifs or etc with that era of “adventurous” indie, my mental reference points tend to reach past indie directly to the origins of the non-rock signifiers being deployed, or otherwise to an earlier era of indie which itself conceived of its stylistic projects in such terms (e.g. post-rock mark 1).

It’s difficult for me to disambiguate how much of that is the music itself, how much is the frame I bring to it peculiar to me, and how much is me unconsciously absorbing the models and modes of classification now common to and exemplary of pop music critique in 2025.

TLDR: the critical conception of animal collective in 2009 feels a bit cringe now, regardless of what you might think of the music itself

Robert Glasper. Released his album Black Radio in 2012 and it went Top 20 — not on the jazz charts, but overall — and won a Grammy for Best R&B Album.

Also, Roy Hargrove. His era of dominance started a few years before this — he was making jazz records since the 90s and in the early 2000s was working with Common, the Roots, D'Angelo, Erykah Badu etc. — but every young jazz trumpeter out now worships Hargrove.

xp great post

The most surprising “this is super popular in 2025” thing for me is emo, I thought we’d be listening to Animal Collective et al forever, not so much Fall Out Boy et al. This observation is passing judgement on neither band/genre… I’m just surprised is all. Emo always seemed like “punk plus boy band” to me, its longevity has surprised me, and not in an unpleasant way

I'll be seeing MCR for the first time in a couple of weeks here at Oracle Park in the city. (100 gecs opening! That's going to be a thing at the least.) I'll be very interested in sensing whatever the crowd vibes are, not to mention the age range.

Burial

oh The Coneheads, duh

The part that makes sense with emo's influence (and the part that will make us feel old) is that current college/high-school age people may have grown up with those catchy songs playing in the car when they were a few years old.

I wouldn't say Mustard went away for a decade -- he had songs on the radio every year, sometimes light years but some pretty big ones as well (Rihanna's "Needed Me," most of Ella Mai and Roddy Ricch's hits, etc). certainly the Kendrick stuff put a nice button on his career and makes it seem like it wasn't all downhill from 2014, though.