I chose these albums based purely on how much mileage I got out of them. Let’s face it—we can obsess about details or compare the artistic weight of various entries, but the only thing that matters is whether I enjoyed listening to it. Everything else is splitting hairs.

Unordered, because again, who wants to argue whether Yoshimi is better than Kid A?

Radiohead – Kid A: Let’s get it out of the way. It’s on the top of all the lists I’ve read, but no one seems to understand—it’s not about the blips and it’s not about the “experimental nature”. When you cue it up, it grabs your attention immediately and does not let go. Who cares what the medium is? Whether a band chooses to deliver a song with a guitar or a keyboard or a custom synthetic sound? It just has to be good, it has to be worth listening to. And I looped myself into a trance with this.

Whiskeytown – Pneumonia
Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker: For all its troubles, Whiskeytown was the rare band that wasn’t torn apart by drugs, money, or anything else within the band. A record company shakeup left them out in the cold, and despite their obvious talent and excellent track record, the new management was simply not interested in releasing what ended up being the band’s final album. Ryan Adams ended up doing all right: first he holes up in Nashville with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings to make the instant lonesome classic Heartbreaker, then he follows that by scoring a deal with the newly formed Lost Highway, a label designed to cater to wayward souls just like him. In the process, he convinces them to release Pneumonia, and Whiskeytown’s rough alt-country gets a full makeover and a proper sendoff infused with pop (“Mirror, Mirror”), 50′s standards (“Paper Moon”) and even a bit of James Iha (“Don’t Be Sad”).

The Strokes – Is This It: We take them for granted now, or perhaps we hate them for spearheading the lo-fi garage-rock revival. This is intellectual music with brains left out of the equation, and I definitely hated it before I could love it. Is it derivative? Yeah. But at least they’re honest about it, and sometimes (most times) I’d rather listen to a good, polished imitation of Iggy Pop than the man himself.

Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros – Global A Go-Go: I was thrilled beyond belief by the first Mescaleros release, and as great as that was, this took things to an entirely new level. Rock Art and the X-Ray Style thrived as a quirky electronic album. Global A Go-Go scraps all that in favor of something much more organic (“Johnny Appleseed”), while retaining the right to pile on the blips and zips when appropriate (“Global A Go-Go”). The secret ingredient here is the addition of old Clash buddy Tymon Dogg, a key contributor on fiddle and classical guitar. The other secret ingredient is the uncanny ability of Joe Strummer to remain relevant at every stage in his career.

Morrissey – You Are the Quarry: I waited so incredibly long for this album. I can remember reading about it at least six months before it was released…no, it was longer than that, because Morrissey was on the Craig Kilborn show in 2002, talking about having an album’s worth of songs and zero label interest (something that, sadly, seems to happen a lot). So I waited about two years, and it was worth it. Quarry has its faults—the songs are heavy-handed, for sure, but you knew that, it’s Morrissey—but it is also an album done by someone who knows how to make albums. And it’s a snarling, aggressive return to form for a man whose previous album was full of lyrics like “To someone, somewhere (oh yeah!) alma matters in mind, body and soul / In part and in whole”. Blech.

(Sidenote: For you diehard fans, I just found this clip of Morrissey performing a rocked-out version of “There Is A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends” on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. I know everything about that sounds made-up, but it’s true.)

Pedro the Lion – Achilles Heel: Another album I can recall waiting for, and another one that delivered. From the opening salvo of “Bands with managers are going places / Bands with messy hair and smooth white faces” you knew David Bazan was out for blood. Those two lines—among the best opening lines of all time—completely took the piss out of the indie rock scene. And from the looks of it, no one seems to have listened…

The challenging thing about Pedro, and later Bazan solo, is he continues to move away from the stereotypes. He could make easy money churning out thinly-veiled Christian commentary, but unlike the rest of the so-called Christian music industry, as he gets further in the criticisms become deeper and more fundamental, mirroring his own actual spiritual journey. I think the only quality required of any artist is honesty, and we should absolutely demand it at every turn.

The Streets – Original Pirate Material: The most original thing to come around in years (the title doesn’t lie), Mike Skinner made tracks that held a wicked mirror up to the urban street life of the time. He would later go on to incredible fame and fortune, taking shots at celebrities and snorting various substances off of various body parts of various models.

But before he morphed into the British late-period Eminem, he gave us Original Pirate Material. You can feel the desperation bleeding out on every track. Skinner has something to prove, he’s got an axe to grind and he wants you to bear witness to some amazing feats…

Spoon – Girls Can Tell / Love Ways: These were recorded as part of the same sessions, and Love Ways is the stronger of the two, but as an EP I don’t feel like it qualifies on its own. Together, there’s no question. This is not their most ambitious record, or the one that got everybody interested, but it’s certainly the most accessible and the strongest in terms of songwriting. Britt Daniel tends to annoy me because he likes to write lyrics based on how the words sound, and not necessarily what they mean. It usually works, but a song like that leaves me feeling empty. Girls Can Tell and Love Ways are full of excellent exceptions: “Take the Fifth”, “Anything You Want”, “Jealousy”—these lyrics have weight, and the songs deliver something more than just a pleasant mix of sounds. “The Fitted Shirt” is the first Spoon song I ever heard, and I still think it’s the best.

The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots: The Lips had been on my radar for a while. I admit, I was taken in by the campy suggestiveness of “She Don’t Use Jelly” back in the day. Yoshimi is, however, something else entirely. What strikes me about this album is its continuity. These songs feel very much at home together, and the production is very consistent. Dave Fridmann does a hell of a job making Wayne Coyne’s vocals sound good.

None of that shit matters. What you get is an album that hits you over the head (“The test starts…NOW”) and takes you on a journey, telling you these stories that are all somehow related—it feels like Asimov, you have robots with feelings, and humans with feelings, and they’re all mixed up together trying to deal with each other. And of course it’s a pretty transparent metaphor, but at least it’s well done.

Andrew W.K. – I Get Wet: This album came along when rap metal was everywhere, and it blew all that shit away. That may make it the most important album on this list. It’s stupid, mindless, borderline misogynistic rock and roll—but I like it. It’s processed, chopped up, and compressed all to hell—but I like it. Yes, I do. Definitely not the kind of thing you could build a career on, but that’s fine since the man himself is apparently much more interested in becoming MTV’s version of Dr. Phil than having a musical career.

Jay-Z – The Black Album: This is the album I would recommend to anyone who doesn’t know where to start with rap music. It lacks the bite of his earlier stuff, sure, but it’s amazingly consistent and effortlessly listenable. From here you can go all sorts of ways. It might fuel your interest in Kanye, Biggie, or Dre and Snoop. It might lead you to follow up on the producers—Kanye (again), The Neptunes, Timbaland, Just Blaze. (For the record, pound for pound, Just Blaze is currently the best producer in rap, and smart—check out his blog.) The Black Album was my gateway drug to all of those things.

Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: This is not, as many would have you believe, an experimental album. That word is thrown about too often when the subject is somewhere beyond the scope of the author, and the connotation is purely negative (an “experimental” work is taken to mean that the artist happened on it by chance, by twiddling knobs or trying things at random). What the critics mean to say is that this is an intellectual album. It is a precise album. It is an album of simple songs presented in complicated ways. The timing was somehow perfect. When we needed this album, it was there.

Manic Street Preachers – Lifeblood: This album got overlooked somehow, and it really bothers me. Europe didn’t love it, America never even heard it, and it wasn’t until Send Away the Tigers that people began using the word “comeback” in conjuction with the Manics. But Lifeblood is a significant achievement, written and recorded by a band that could have quit 10 years prior and still had their names firmly etched in the history books. The difference is that any other band would jump the shark, and these guys never have.

Lifeblood is classic Manics and would serve as a good introduction, especially to someone who would not necessarily be interested in the band’s politics. It’s less political and more personal, which may have been the reason it didn’t sell. Regardless, without this album there is no Send Away the Tigers and no Journal for Plague Lovers—both listed here as honorable mentions and absolutely worth checking out.

Kanye West – The College Dropout: Before he went crazy, he was really fucking good.