It has become evident that appearing on a best of 2000s list is a young person’s game. This gets my musical goat because old people rock. But who has rocked most successfully?
To qualify for this poll, a record must meet the following criteria:
1. The artist must have been recording for at least 25 years at the start of the decade, releasing a record in or before 1975.
2. The record must appear on one of the following four lists:
Village Voice Pazz & Jop Top 40
Robert Christgau’s Year End Dean’s List
Acclaimedmusic.net’s Top 3000, or the “bubbling under” section
Metacritic’s 30 Best-Reviewed Records of the Year lists
3. It must be newly-recorded music. No live albums or compilations. We'll call this the How The West Was Won rule.
After much deliberation, my staff concluded that limiting the selections to those 4 lists created a wide cross section of records, while providing some sort of relatively objective criteria. Of course, everyone will have some pet records that fail to appear, and my staff is looking forward to hearing about them.
Poll Results
| Option | Votes |
| Bob Dylan – Love and Theft | 10 |
| Brian Wilson – Smile | 4 |
| Steely Dan – Two Against Nature | 2 |
| Dolly Parton – Little Sparrow | 2 |
| Emmylou Harris – Red Dirt Girl | 2 |
| Tom Waits – Blood Money | 2 |
| Kraftwerk – Tour De France Soundtrack | 2 |
| Al Green – I Can’t Stop | 1 |
| Linda Thompson – Fashionably Late | 1 |
| Johnny Cash – Unearthed | 1 |
| Neil Young - Greendale | 1 |
| Michael Jackson – Invincible | 1 |
| Leonard Cohen – Ten New Songs | 1 |
| Tom Waits – Real Gone | 1 |
| Joni Mitchell – Both Sides Now | 1 |
| Loretta Lynn – Van Lear Rose | 1 |
| David Bowie – Heathen | 1 |
| Bettye Lavette – A Woman Like Me | 0 |
| John Cale – Hobosapiens | 0 |
| Emmylou Harris – Stumble Into Grace | 0 |
| Warren Zevon – The Wind | 0 |
| Peter Stampfel and the Bottlecaps – The Jig Is Up | 0 |
| Tom Waits – Alice | 0 |
| Johnny Cash – American IV: The Man Comes Around | 0 |
| Merle Haggard – If I Could Only Fly | 0 |
| Lou Reed – Ecstasy | 0 |
| Johnny Cash – American III: Solitary Man | 0 |
| John Hammond – Wicked Grin | 0 |
| Buddy Guy – Sweet Tea | 0 |
| Billy Joe Shaver – The Earth Rolls On | 0 |
| Nick Lowe – The Convincer | 0 |
| Bruce Springsteen – The Rising | 0 |
| Solomon Burke – Don’t Give Up On Me | 0 |
| Orchestra Baobab – Specialist In All Styles | 0 |
| Tom Ze – Jogos de Armar | 0 |
| Warren Zevon – My Ride’s Here | 0 |
| Ray Charles – Genius Loves Company | 0 |
― kornrulez6969, Friday, 11 December 2009 16:10 (fifteen years ago)