best music year of the 2000s

what music year of the 2000s will 2013 be most like?

^sister poll

I'll have to really think about this, but my first impression is 2002 or 2008.

2007

I feel like we had a discussion about this not so long ago?

Here's my ranking.

2008
2005
2007
2001
2004
2006
2003
2002
2000
2009

went through itunes. they're all pretty good. hell, 2000 is hard to beat: voodoo, dopethrone, pop, down among the deadmen, forevernevermore, stankonia, teaches of peaches, stories from the city, rated r, nightly trembling, all hands on the bad one, OO void, howdy!, de stijl, godlike snake...

2003 or gtfo

bold choice!

i voted 2009 because i liked the chillwave/glo-fi/whatever boom as well as merriwether post pavillion and the first bon iver record. also it was the happiest year of my life, so far, for other reasons, and that probably informs my nostalgia for that year.

2002 was really awesome. Original Pirate Material. MC Pitman. The Boom Selection monster mashup CD. The Eminem Show (the last time he really mattered, man). "Losing My Edge." "House of Jealous Lovers." "Dance to the Underground." Electroclash. The New York dance-punk scene. "Clocks." Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. (). "Can't Get You Out of My Head" and "Love at First Sight." Just amazing stuff.

voted 2001. among other things, Aaliyah's final album.

I went with 2008. Tons of great albums I still play a lot by Portishead, Sebastien Tellier, Solange, Erykah Badu, Wild Beasts, Lindstrom, Cut Copy, Goldfrapp, Robert Forster, TV on the Radio, Jazmine Sullivan, Hercules & Love Affair, Hot Chip, Neon Neon, Ne-Yo, Vampire Weekend, Danity Kane, Air France, Santigold, M83, Gang Gang Dance, Grace Jones, British Sea Power, Supergrass, Sparks, Magnetic Fields, Algebra, J*Davey, The Walkmen, Lykke Li, Tiffany Evans, Cheri Dennis and probably a bunch of others I'm forgetting.

2008, 2005, and 2000 were my favorites.

2007. I hated 2008.

ooh, 2007 was a good one too. or 2006, with M.I.A.'s first album... that was the first ILM thread I ever read and was the beginning of years of lurking/sporadic posting.

2008 probably

It was a tossup between 2001 and 2004. 2001 was when a lot of dance and pop music started to make more sense to me, so went for that

Really baffled by all the people mentioning 2008. I've always thought it was a dog of a year musically. The P4K people's list thing also showed less album spiked from 2008 than any of the years around it.

They were all good years tbh. Its probably my favorite decade after the 70s. Even my least favorite years ( the bookends; 2000 and 2009, respectively) had amazing albums in there.

The P4K people's list thing also showed less album spiked from 2008 than any of the years around it.

lol.

2008 = NuAmerykah pt. 1, St. Dymphna, loads of great psych/freak (Woods Family Creeps, Sun Araw's Beach Head, Paavoharju, Boris, the Farflung album was kind of Monster Magnet-meets-Devo), some decent records that others liked more than me (Meanderthal, Love/Hate). Also, a killer Fall record. It's like all the strange disparate elements of my music interest all decided to weirdly convene and throw a crazy party...

that said, I probably need to get my shit together & finally give real listens to Portishead's Third and the first Vampire Weekend album, like a responsible music connoisseur would :P

admittedly, 2000 probably does give it a run for its money

2008 was p great, imo. suppose it depends on what you're into, but:

actress - hazyville
arthur russell - love is overtaking me
black milk - tronic
a bunch of blank dogs singles & eps
boris - smile
colin stetson - new history warfare 1
erykah badu - nu amerykah 1
fennesz - the black sea
flying lotus - los angeles
grouper - dragging a dead deer up a hill
hammers of misfortune - fields/church of broken glass
harvey milk - life...the best game in town
bunch of jay reatard singles
killer mike - pledge allegiance to the grind II
king tuff - was dead
lil wayne - tha carter III
lindstrom - where you go i go too
nobunny - love visions
oneida - preteen weaponry
paavoharju - laulu laakson kukista
portishead - third
villalobos - vasco
shit and shine - kuss mich meine liebe
skull disco comp (probably less interesting to those who'd been following along)
studio - yearbook 2
several sun araw releases
thee oh sees - the master's bedroom
witch - paralyzed
zola jesus - poor sons & soeur sewer singles

i can't sleep

xp drugs otm

even copped his "nu", apparently

omg, so glad to see all the thoughtful responses! please don't forget to vote in the sister poll:

what music year of the 2000s will 2013 be most like?

they are scheduled to end at the same time.

Why do i always spell it "nu"? Smh

I voted for 2007 and then realised I prefered 2006. :<

2008 = The-Dream, bitches.

the-dream's peak year was 2009 tho

like, that was the year he gifted us with love vs money AND how to be a lady AND memoirs of an imperfect angel

still kinda staggering that all three of those albums came out in the same year

2001 or 2007 going on albums, would have to look through my iTunes playlists to get an idea for singles.

Voted 2008. Also Azeda Booth, Mae Shi and Parts & Labor. And Dear Science is my favorite TVotR.

All years have great stuff but quite a bit of new-to-me stuff I've liked a lot if late has been from 2002

Some of my favourites from 2001:

Aaliyah - Aaliyah
Absu - Tara
Basement Jaxx - Rooty
Björk - Vespertine
Cannibal Ox - Cold Vein
Circulatory System - S/T
Daft Punk - Discovery
Dismemberment Plan - Change
Missy Elliott - So Addictive
Fugazi - The Argument
GBV - Isolation Drills
Janet Jackson - All for You
Jay-Z - Blueprint
Jan Jelinek - Loop-Finding Jazz Records
Low - Things We Lost in the Fire
Microphones - Glow Pt. 2
Jim O'Rourke - Insignificance
Radiohead - Amnesiac
Shins - Oh Inverted World
Spoon - Girls Can Tell
Tool - Lateralus

Lex I meant any 2008 list without him clearly is incomplete.

I thought Love Hate came out in 2007? That was the only reason I didn't include him on my list of great albums from that year.

7 years are always great. 1977. 1967. 1997

2001 > 2004 > 2007 > 2005 > 2002 > 2010 > 2003 > and the rest...

2007 >> 2004 > 2005 > 2003 > 2006 > 2000 > 2002 > 2009 > 2001 >>>>>>> 2008.

Maybe.

Who knows? It's pretty arbitrary.

I thought Love Hate came out in 2007? That was the only reason I didn't include him on my list of great albums from that year.

yeah, i got love hate tagged as a 2007 release

Just looked at my list of albums that came out for each year. I already voted for 2008 but think that 2005 might actually top it.

Art Brut, Antony & The Johnsons, Broadcast, Rachel Stevens, My Morning Jacket, Saint Etienne, Robyn, LCD Soundsystem, Girls Aloud, Erasure, Ladytron, Kate Bush, Maximo Park, Common, Go-Betweens, Junior Senior, Fischerspooner, Elbow, Doves, Kanye West, The Clientele, Go-Kart Mozart, Beanie Sigel, Hold Steady, Sugababes, Goldfrapp, Lil Wayne, Spoon, Boards of Canada, Supergrass, M.I.A, British Sea Power, Kelly Polar, SFA, Teairre Mari, Ellen Allien, Brooke Valentine, Richard Hawley, Final Fantasy, Little Brother and UK releases for Annie and Arcade Fire.

It really was a year for great pop music. A lot of those that I listed are my favourite albums by those artists.

I'm terrible at remembering time but will go with '08 for Paavoharju.

Though I suppose I should rep for '05, being the year of our album release. But nah, we're not as good as Paavoharju.

Here's Bubbachups (motel de moka collaborator) and my top 10 for 2008. I think emily got it right, it was a great year for oddball music. Great albums seemed to come from all corners, not from a particular set of genres.

Moka

1. Paavoharju – Laulu Laakson Kukista (Fonal)
2. Jacaszek – Treny (Miasmah)
3. Scott Tuma – Not For Nobody (digitalis)
4. Shed – Shedding the Past (Ostgut Ton)
5. Tape – Luminarium (Häpna)
6. Fleet Foxes – fleet foxes (Sub pop)
7. Bruno Pronsato – Why can’t we be like us (Hello?)
8. Grouper – Dragging a dead dear up the hill (Type)
9. Lykke Li – Youth Novels (LL)
10. Zdzislaw Piernik & Piotr Zbrodzki – Namanga (Vivo)

Bubbachups

1. Birchville Cat Motel – Gunpowder Temple of Heaven (Pica Disk)
2. Kazuki Tomokawa – Blue Water, Red
3. Sun Kil Moon – April (Caldo Verde)
4. Dennis González & Faruq Z. Bey with Northwoods Improvisers Septet – Hymn for Tomasz Stanko (Qbico)
5. Scott Tuma – Not For Nobody (Digitalis)
6. Micah P. Hinson and the Red Empire Orchestra (Full Time Hobby)
7. Richard Skelton – Marking Time (Preservation)
8. Fire on Fire – The Orchard (Young God)
9. Kawaguchi Masami’s New Rock Syndicate – Cat vs. Frog (Palindrone)
10. Fred Eaglesmith – Tinderbox (Sonic Rendezvous / Lonesome Day)

Notable omissions: portishead, toumani diabate, beach house, per norgard, the fall, fennesz, philip jeck, deerhunter, flying lotus, big blood, m83, erykah badu, earth... Also according to rateyourmusic, dozens of great metal records I know nothing about.

Emily: paaavoharju released their debut, yha hamaraa, on 2005. So you're clear.

Also the books 'lost and safe' us from 2005 and i love that one.

I imagine it goes hand in hand with buying far fewer physical releases. In the 80s and 90s, I had to go to the store and buy something, and I'd have an artifact lying around as a constant reminder of that trip to the store and that made it easier to remember years and seasons and maybe even months when things were released. Now, I buy some mp3s on Amazon and they just sit on my hard drive, out of sight, until I feel like hearing them. Who knows when I made that purchase, and who cares.

I think part of it for me is that post-graduation there was no longer the clear delineation between years in other aspects of my life

I would never confuse 1965 with 1967.

Absolutely. That's a bit of an exaggerated example, in that those are two of the most famous years in pop-music history ('65 arguably #1), but I do start losing sense of years-as-years at some point in the early- to mid-'90s.

Oh--my #1 reason has to do with getting old, although the move away from physical releases probably figures in too.

after careful consideration definitely 2000

While not necessarily the best year of the decade, I do tend to think of 2009 as one of the more distinctive years what with Merriweather Post Pavilion and the rise of Chillwave/Glo-Fi and emergence of stars like Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Drake and Ke$ha as well as events like the death of Michael Jackson and "Immagonnaletyoufinish". It seems to be more a part of the 2010s than it does the 2000s.

I find it odd that I have so little recollection for which year a specific song or album from the '00s onward was. Stuff that is prehistoric for me I can easily peg to a year; I would never confuse 1965 with 1967.

If asked I can tell you when and under what circumstances I bought an album and its year of release, but if you ask, "Name your five favorite 2004 albums" I freeze.

2001. Second place: 2007.

yeah, i am the same way alfred. i can link albums with the year they came out, but i have a harder time linking years to albums.

voted 03 instinctively but it might actually be 01

Probably 2002. Up The Bracket and Songs For The Deaf.

2001. Love & Theft, White Blood Cells and others

2009 also gave us Fever Ray.

2001 was the last time I liked a good portion of stuff in the UK charts, might be an age thing.

How old were you then?

22/23

I'm about a year younger, and have the same affection for 2003 in terms of chart stuff (in the UK); I pretty much completely lose track after that. Which bothered me a little until about two years ago.

Basically me losing interest coincides with the end of the golden era of UK garage, and the decline in quality of Timbaland and the Neptunes' work.

I think I stuck it out for a couple more years cos of Sugababes.

The only thing that really sucked about 2000 was modern rock stations getting flooded with rap-metal and post-Creed. Besides that, Top 40 and hiphop were outstanding. A few "dated" production sounds here and there, but I mostly remember lots of fun awesome singles and a decently-sized list of great albums that I still often listen to.

I'm thinking about 2000 now... I was 16 going on 17... the year I left secondary school and started college. Eminem was massive (I remember a lot of people listening to the Marshall Mathers LP), there was a LOT of nu-metal around (some tolerable, some intolerable):Slipknot and Korn's Issues had come out the previous year, and I remember a lot of people of the same age as myself listening to those albums a lot throughout 2000... Deftones' White Pony came out in 2000, as well as Limp Bizkit's Chocolate Starfish later on in the year. Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile came out late on in 1999, so I knew a lot of folks were still listening to/digesting that (me included). I remember coming across a lot of pop-punk fans too: Blink-182 and The Offspring were probably at the height of their popularity in the UK in 2000, whereas Green Day (weirdly) were going through a bit of a lull (their 2000 album Warning didn't help).

I remember hearing Muse quite a lot (on the back of Showbiz) and Incubus quite a lot (on the back of Make Yourself)... U2 put out All That You Can't Leave Behind in 2000, and I remember people enthusing about that...

Personally though, I spent 2000 mostly listening to old music (mainly '70s prog stuff) and waiting for Super Furry Animals to put out Mwng and Radiohead to put out Kid A.

Oh yeah, and I remember listening to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins too, because MACHINA/The Machines Of God had come out that year.

At The Drive-In's Relationship Of Command, Eels Daisies Of The Galaxy and The Cure's Bloodflowers were three others I remember listening to a lot as well.

I'll defend 2006, it was probably peak era minimal techno and I was off my face for quite a lot of it

^^^this. Hot summer too! I have opinions about other years but unfortunately I don't know what they are cause who gives a fuck about years

Facts of Life was 2000. Only remembering this because I'm in a black box recorder mood at the moment.

lol i was thinking about typing out a long year-by-year breakdown of the decade tracing what I was doing and what I was listening to, but thankfully I haven't had the time. My listening habits kind of dipped in and out of contemporary music tastes depending on what I was doing at the time. I am p much the exact inverse of Alfred in that I mostly only identify albums from year to year, and oftentimes the favorite albums from any given year will be ones that I only heard later, many times MUCH later...

I was in college in 2000, I was a devoted SPIN reader, but there were not really a lot of places I could get my hands on the hip indie rock albums I read about...in the early part of the year, I was a freshman and everyone in my quad liked Creed and Blink 182 and The Hippos, and I was basically listening to whatever weird altrock CD I could get my hands on. Towards the end of the year, I was a sophomore and living in a fraternity house and I had started smoking marijuana, and there became a specific group of albums that meant a lot to me: Kid A, Mama's Gun, American Beauty, first Remy Zero album, Stankonia, Farmhouse, Play, Loveless (some of these were due to peer influences, others not so much)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

please don't forget the sister poll.

what music year of the 2000s will 2013 be most like?

lol i killed this thread my bad

(my favorite 5 from 2004 = Madvillainy, Oneida's Secret Wars, RTX's Transmaniacon, Paik's Satin Black, Ariel Pink's The Doldrums)

Another 2001 album -- Manic Street Preachers - Know Your Enemy.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I thought 2003 ("The Year Pop Broke") would walk this one. Huh.

2001 really was an amazing year though, both for small pond personal favorites and big pop event albums i actually like

Correct winner. Surprised 02 is so low though.

smh @ 2007

Oh yeah, and I remember listening to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins too, because MACHINA/The Machines Of God had come out that year.

― The Jupiter 8 (Turrican), Tuesday, April 16, 2013 1:50 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, me too. I probably listened to Machina 20 times that year. Haven't heard it since 2000, though.

Another amazing gem 2001 can add to its crown: Fennesz's Endless Summer

Confield was that year, too.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/14/Staind_Break_the_Cycle.jpg/220px-Staind_Break_the_Cycle.jpg

Would have voted 2001 too for Discovery, Kitten & Thee Glitz, Vespertine, Melody AM, Is This It?, First Album, Ressucitation, Rooty, Fever, amongst others.

i didn't vote but i think it would have been 2000, so many great albums

Aimee Mann - Bachelor #2
Giant Sand - Chore of Enchantment
Montgolfier Brothers - Seventeen Stars
Johnny Cash - American III: Solitary Man
Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Lift Your Skinny Fists...
Lambchop - Nixon
Yo La Tengo - And then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
Go-Betweens - The Friends of Rachel Worth
David Thomas and Two Pale Boys - Surf's Up
Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker

Yeah 2000 is really good imo

2009 really was pretty weak.

yeah, easily the worst year since 2000.

there are a whole heap of records from 2009 that i totally adore

i mean ffs love vs money, how to be a lady vol. 1, and blaqkout all came out in 2009

I should probably check out Blaqkout since I liked Book of David a lot. Also looking forward to checking out Quik's forthcoming album in less than 2 weeks!

Blaqkout could be 1/2 as good as Book of David and it would probably still make my top 10 for 2009 due to lack of competition.

2004
2005
2001
2009
2002
2000
2007
2008
2003

with no order:

Kanye west - late registration (2005)
Eminem - the marshall mathers lp (2000)
Justin timberlake - futuresex/lovesounds(2006)
Sparks - lil beethoven (2002)
Animal collective - feels (2005)
Khonnor - handwriting (2004)
Girls aloud - chemistry (2005)
Aaliyah - aaliyah (2000)
Aimee mann - the forgotten arm (2004)
Tweet - southhumming bird (2001)
Sugababes - taller in more ways(2005)
Sonic youth - murray street (2002)
David sylvian - manafon (2007)
Stars of the lid - the tired sounds of the lid(2001)
Scott Walker - the drift(2006)
Fennesz - endless summer(2002)
Kate bush - aerial(2005)
Black dice - beaches & canyons(2003)
Annie - anniemal(2004)
Missy elliott - miss e so addictive (2001)
Amerie - touch (2005)
Ruff sqwad - guns and roses vol. 1(2003)
The streets - a grand don't come for free(2003)
Jay z - blueprint (2001)
Basement jaxx - rooty
Diizzee rascal - boy in da corner
Britney spears - blackout
Outkast - stankonia 
Cassie - cassie
Diddy dirty love - last train to paris 
Morrissey - you are the quarry
Rufus wainwright - poses 
Panda bear - person pitch
D'angelo - voodoo
Wiley - treddin on thin ice
Burial - untrue
Usher - confessions
Ricardo villalobos - fizheuer zieheuer
Omar s - fabric45
Electric red - how to be a lady vol 1
Arthur russell - calling out of context
Kelis - kaleidoscope
200 Km/h in the Wrong Lane – Tatu
Ali farka touré - in the heart of the moon
Liars - drum's not dead
NSYNC - celebrity 
Excepter - ka
Gang gang dance - saint dymphna  
- matt elliott - drinking songs  
- the-dream - love vs. Money 
- sunn 0))) - monoliths & dimensions
- teedra Moses -complex simplicity
-T.I., King 
-taylor swift - fearless
-Ashlee Simpson, Autobiography
-Ciara, The Evolution 
- electrelane - axes
- rachel stevens - come and get it
-oneohtrix point never - returnal
-Lightning Bolt Hypermagic Mountain 
- wolf eyes - human animal
- ben frost - by the throat