Recently, I have fallen down the music list rabbit hole. It began with making best album lists for every year since I was born and has expanded to various niche lists, such as best lo-fi album and goosebump albums. A few days ago, the idea came to me of compiling music related Mt. Rushmore lists which are obviously Top 4 lists. These are popular with sports fans, but I haven't seen them much with music fans who lean toward Top 10 lists. This also seemed like an excellent opportunity to resume writing on my Sound Mind blog, so here we are. After some thought, I have settled on a few arbitrary parameters that maintain the spirit of Sound Mind. The main guidance is the continued recognition of Beatles Exceptionalism. None of my Mt. Rushmores will include The Beatles, because they would be the entirety of many of the lists. This does not extend to their individual projects and solo careers, however, so good news for All Things Must Pass. This does not exclude Mt. Rushmores specific to just The Beatles. The other parameter involves the 2000's, which is today's topic.
After attempting to make favorite album lists for the 2000's, I came to the conculsion that not enough time has passed for most of this music to be at a Mt. Rushmore level. And full disclosure, I realized I am not familiar with the vast majority of the music that has been released in the past two decades. My interests have been exclusively indie pop and college rock, which is a very narrow focus. It would be ridiculous for me to list albums from every year of the 2000's when I have listened to nothing from the Top 40 or hip hop. I do know what I like though, so I will share a couple 2000's Mt. Rushmores today. Going forward, I will probably work backwards through time and sprinkle in the occasional random music topic list, like favorite drummers.
The first three choices for my 2000's Mt. Rushmore bands were quite easy; The White Stripes, Doves and Kasabian. Before anyone quibbles about The White Stripes, their first album was released in June of 1999, so I am counting them as a 2000's band. The eccentric Jack White is a charismatic frontman, incendiary guitarist and a great sonwriter, as evidenced by his lyrics on songs such as, Fell in Love With a Girl, The Hardest Button to Button and Icky Thump. And Meg White's drumming is as fun as it is divisive. Doves are probably my favorite band of the 2000's. Their debut, Lost Souls, is a masterpiece and the rest of their catlog is outstanding. After an eleven year hiatus, they returned in 2020 with The Universal Want. Kasabian are possibly the last remaining relevent rock band in the world. The best concert I have ever attended was their show at the House of Blues in Chicago. The band suffered a recent setback when their lead singer Tom Meighan was kicked out of the group because of domestic violence charges, but they have a new album coming out this summer with principal songwriter Sergio Pizzorno on vocals. The fourth artist on the 2000's Mt. Rushmore came down to Interpol and Courtney Barnett. While Courtney Barnett is my favorite songwriter of the 2000's and is in my Top 5 of live shows, Interpol gets the nod for fourth place on the strength of Turn on the Bright Lights, Antics and Our Love to Admire. My Mt. Rushmore of 2000's albums is, not surprisingly, Lost Souls, Turn on the Bright Lights, White Blood Cells and Kasabian's self-titled debut.
Even though I don't think the 2000's warrant extensive historical examination at this time, there are a couple new bands that I'm very excited about; Yard Act and Wet Leg. In the near future I will post about each of them at greater length, but they are fantastic. As I said before, I will be doing Mt. Rushmore albums for each year working backwards. I will start with 1999. The last couple years of the 90's were pretty weak, but the mid-90's is loaded. I might have to do quarterly lists for 1995-7 because those years are so stacked with brilliant albums. Peace.
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