Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s
by 
buzzdainer 
The most striking development in the twenty-first century music world is the way cyber-balkanization through digital media has rendered just about everyone into distinct musical camps that don't talk to each other much. So it has become possible, for instance, for a person to love Josh Ritter (associated with indie folk and Americana) but never to have heard of Josh Rouse (who works in much the same musical terrain, just with a different audience). During the seventies and eighties, I typically knew just about every song in Casey Kasum's weekly top 40 (which I listened to religiously), whereas by the 2000s I'd be lucky--or unlucky, depending on your perspective--to know even one. So how did I discover new music? Well, in the first half of the decade, by listening to WNCW (a great community station based in Spindale, North Carolina), raiding my then-girlfriend's music collection, and attending concerts in Asheville. A lot of my musical loves came out of, or were influenced by, the rivers and hollows of the Blue Ridge Mountains and Pisgah National Forest near where I lived.
Later, I relocated first to Vermont and then to Nevada, where I became suffused with both the seedy cityscape of Reno and the spectacular natural landscapes of Lake Tahoe, the Sierra Nevada, and the Great Basin. I started playing music with a group of friends, reading a lot of music reviews (No Depression magazine was my favorite until it went out of print, though it remained an active online presence), and listening to more indie rock and electronica. I was probably a more adventurous music listener than I was in the nineties, but I still missed out on some pretty cool post-rock, garage rock revival, abstract hip hop, plunderphonics, and other genres I didn't know about, or just ignored for whatever reason. So I'm exploring some of that stuff now. As with all my charts, I'd love to receive your feedback, and I'd appreciate any music recommendations you might have. Happy reading!
- Chart updated: 04/07/2024 16:15
- (Created: 02/16/2016 19:11).
- Chart size: 100 albums.
There are 24 comments for this chart from BestEverAlbums.com members and Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s has an average rating of 91 out of 100 (from 34 votes). Please log in or register to leave a comment or assign a rating.
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This chart is currently filtered to only show albums from 2006. (Remove this filter)
Producer extraordinaire Danger Mouse shows up in several places on my charts, and as I've pointed out elsewhere, I think his greatest gift is his ability to create beats that serve the talents of his co-collaborator(s). Here he teams up with neo-soul singer Cee-Lo Green to make a very fine record that in many ways defies easy genre classification. At times a soul record, at times hip hop, St. Elsewhere showcases Cee-Lo Green's considerable talent without being flashy. The track everybody knows is "Crazy," and I do think it's the highlight, but the whole album is well worth a long listen, and is a great place to start if you're curious about hip hop but convinced you won't like it.
[First added to this chart: 08/08/2018]
Year of Release:
2006
Appears in:
Rank Score:
732
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I'm not normally a huge fan of concept albums, but when I hear a good one, I think I like it even better than a conventional album. This one centers on a lovelorn, nostalgia-ridden protagonist named Van Occupanther, who must have lived in some mythical past surrounded by dense forests, soaring woodwinds, and spacey production lost somewhere in the psychedelic mushroom-addled seventies. It's not exactly prog rock, but it does conjure up some of that same spirit of sprites, satyrs, and gnomes. I dig it. The song you might know here is "Roscoe," which you'll swear is a lost outtake from Fleetwood Mac's Rumours.
[First added to this chart: 02/16/2016]
Year of Release:
2006
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Rank Score:
1,244
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Something of a departure from the mariach-indie rock of Calexico's earlier recordings, Garden Ruin is, relatively speaking, a straightforward indie rock album. I think it works to their benefit, as this album really showcases their hard-hitting lyrics and driving Tejano rock sound. Whereas each of their first few records had several instrumental tracks, this one includes only one ("Nom de Plume"). "Cruel" is the best song here, starting with an urgent guitar riff and launching into devastating lyrics alluding to the loss of Native American and Spanish American culture during American westward expansion: "Rituals seek root / Razed before they're told / Stories break like branches in the cold."
[First added to this chart: 02/16/2016]
Striking a skillful balance between songs that are deeply personal with those that are ardently political, often at the same time, The Animal Years came at the height of the Iraq War, a conflict that tore families apart both in the United States and abroad. Several songs on this album deal explicitly with this theme, while others, such as the good-natured, midtempo Western romance "Good Man," reveal a longing for escape that can't be entirely disentangled from its cultural context: "You're not a good shot but I'm worse / And there's so much where we ain't been yet / So swing up on this little horse / The only thing we'll hit is sunset."
[First added to this chart: 02/16/2016]
A few years ago, NPR Music conducted a series of polls to try to find out which albums were most loved--meaning, among people who've heard the album, what percentage of people liked it. In this very non-scientific methodology, among albums made by female artists, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood came in at #5. That's consistent with my experience. Among people who've heard of Neko Case, I don't know a single one who doesn't love her. I think this is because on this record Neko finds just the right balance between meticulous songcraft and female-empowerment badassery. "Hold On, Hold On" is such a perfect example of what makes her a great artist, with its urgent, reverb-heavy guitar; powerful, lungs-for-days vocals; and stormy, David Lynch-esque narrative.
[First added to this chart: 02/16/2016]
Year of Release:
2006
Appears in:
Rank Score:
860
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Mason Jennings does not have a fantastic singing voice, nor is he an exceptional guitarist or even a consistently great songwriter. What makes him worth hearing, from my perspective, is the aesthetic he represents--one that values family and place (Jennings hails from Minnesota and sets a number of his songs in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes) in a way that is earnest and bohemian. "Be Here Now," inspired by Ram Dass' megaselling consciousness book, comes alive with a warm and welcoming piano, acoustic guitar, bass, drums and tambourine that surge with the unity of a single instrument and the force of an orchestra. Jennings' toffee voice melts around the melody, and it feels as silly and pointless to quibble with his concerns--the intention to live fully and wholeheartedly in the moment--as it is to debate a yogini in the midst of a downward dog.
[First added to this chart: 11/18/2016]
I was living in Reno in November of 2006 when Ys was released, and I immediately recognized, amid the dense allegory and arcane literary references embedded in Joanna Newsom's lyrics, music that is grounded in the Sierra Nevada and Yuba River Valley landscapes in which Newsom was born and raised. Take, for instance, the opening lines to the album's centerpiece, "Emily": "The meadowlark and the chim-choo-ree and the sparrow / Set to the sky in a flying spree, for the sport over the pharaoh / A little while later the Pharisees dragged comb through the meadow / Do you remember what they called up to you and me, in our window?" Somehow, in these lyrics, Newsom manages to weave together personal history, geographical and ecological specificity, and Biblical allusions that give the whole experience an ancient, mythical feel. This is creative, ambitious, brilliant stuff--the threads drawn together by an artist still in the early stages of her career. I cannot wait to see what she does in the years and decades to come.
[First added to this chart: 02/16/2016]
Year of Release:
2006
Appears in:
Rank Score:
8,399
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While not quite as ambitious as the trilogy of albums that preceded it--Southern Rock Opera, Decoration Day, and The Dirty South--A Blessing and a Curse is still a very worthy Drive-By Truckers album, one that is both personal and hard edged. It's hard a produce a bad album, or even a mediocre one, when you have a songwriting triple threat as strong as Patterson Hood, Jason Isbell, and Mike Cooley, although the fragmentedness of this album suggests that maybe there was too much talent in this band for this formula to remain sustainable. No matter. A lot of this is great, especially the heartbreaking "Little Bonnie," a slice of Hood family history that encapsulates pain and shame in a way that feels completely frank and utterly shattering.
[First added to this chart: 02/16/2016]
The finest solo album by Giant Sand frontman Howe Gelb. The motivation behind these delicately sparse recordings was to experiment with the juxtaposition between Gelb's usual experimental alt-country rambling, which had been his trademark since forming Giant Sand back in 1980, and the warm, compositional synchronicity of a gospel choir. The result is a totally unique collaboration which breathes new life into Gelb's meticulously crafted songs, especially the quasi-religious "Get to Leave," in which Gelb intones, "If you don't get the fuel, pray get the passion to keep the spirit rolling." This album is chock full of that kind of spirit.
[First added to this chart: 02/16/2016]
That The Avalanche--a collection of outtakes and B-sides from Illinois--is this good lends some perspective into how good an album Illinois is. At the time he was writing and recording all this music, Sufjan Stevens must have been on one of those creative highs that one experiences once in a lifetime, if at all. In this case he's made an album that parallels Illinois in many ways, following a similar narrative arc and emotional trajectory. It's a record that feels familiar and homey, especially if you've heard Illinois, and the best track, "Pittsfield," in the words of Pitchfork reviewer Chris Dahlen, "has the cozy tunefulness of a chicken soup jingle."
[First added to this chart: 02/16/2016]
Total albums: 14. Page 1 of 2
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Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s composition
| Year | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 9 | 9% | |
| 2001 | 6 | 6% | |
| 2002 | 11 | 11% | |
| 2003 | 7 | 7% | |
| 2004 | 9 | 9% | |
| 2005 | 11 | 11% | |
| 2006 | 14 | 14% | |
| 2007 | 14 | 14% | |
| 2008 | 8 | 8% | |
| 2009 | 11 | 11% |
| Artist | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|||
| Drive-By Truckers | 5 | 5% | |
| Ryan Adams | 5 | 5% | |
| Devendra Banhart | 5 | 5% | |
| Josh Ritter | 5 | 5% | |
| Neko Case | 3 | 3% | |
| Spoon | 3 | 3% | |
| Wilco | 3 | 3% | |
| Show all | |||
Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s chart changes
| Biggest climbers |
|---|
| Up 1 from 13th to 12thFor Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver |
| Biggest fallers |
|---|
| Down 1 from 12th to 13thFuneral by Arcade Fire |
Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s similar charts
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| Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s | boppare | 2000s decade chart | 2020 | |
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s |  samistake2ice | 2000s decade chart | 2016 | |
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s |  paladisiac | 2000s decade chart | 2023 | |
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s | mjbreuer | 2000s decade chart | 2016 | |
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s | hoomantc | 2000s decade chart | 2016 |  |
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s | ewhittenburg | 2000s decade chart | 2015 | |
| Uncut's Albums of 2000s | Uncut | 2000s decade chart | 2009 | |
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s | Dunnand | 2000s decade chart | 2018 | |
Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s similarity to your chart(s)
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Other decade charts by buzzdainer
buzzdainer has shared 6 more decade charts with the community. Browse them all here.| Title | Source | Type | Published | Country |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 2020s | buzzdainer | 2020s decade chart | 2025 | |
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010s | buzzdainer | 2010s decade chart | 2024 | |
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s | buzzdainer | 2000s decade chart | 2024 | |
Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s ratings
Average Rating = (n ÷ (n + m)) × av + (m ÷ (n + m)) × AVwhere:
av = trimmed mean average rating an item has currently received.
n = number of ratings an item has currently received.
m = minimum number of ratings required for an item to appear in a 'top-rated' chart (currently 10).
AV = the site mean average rating.
Showing latest 5 ratings for this chart. | Show all 34 ratings for this chart.
| Rating | Date updated | Member | Chart ratings | Avg. chart rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 09/12/2024 09:35 |  LedZep | 1,103 | 84/100 | |
| 09/04/2023 03:49 | Moondance | 476 | 85/100 | |
| 09/03/2023 12:12 |  Tamthebam | 651 | 85/100 | |
| 12/18/2020 20:12 |  jnfbn | 309 | 96/100 | |
| 12/18/2020 15:30 |  StefanR10 | 82 | 88/100 |
Rating metrics:
Outliers can be removed when calculating a mean average to dampen the effects of ratings outside the normal distribution. This figure is provided as the trimmed mean. A high standard deviation can be legitimate, but can sometimes indicate 'gaming' is occurring. Consider a simplified example* of an item receiving ratings of 100, 50, & 0. The mean average rating would be 50. However, ratings of 55, 50 & 45 could also result in the same average. The second average might be more trusted because there is more consensus around a particular rating (a lower deviation).
(*In practice, some charts can have several thousand ratings)
This chart is rated in the top 2% of all charts on BestEverAlbums.com. This chart has a Bayesian average rating of 91.1/100, a mean average of 92.8/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 92.6/100. The standard deviation for this chart is 6.1.
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Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s comments
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From Moondance 09/04/2023 03:55 | #298963
Very entertaining chart - love the love for the mostly 'undiscovered', like Josh, Joseph, Okkervil River, Gregory, Xavier (an Aussie of course), Rhett, Langhorne & Franti - most of whom I have only recently discovered (& now enjoy) via this site and member charts.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From Johnnyo 09/03/2023 11:00 | #298953
Tremendous and what appears to be a very personal chart. Love it
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From buzzdainer 12/19/2020 18:33 | #262942
buzzdainer 12/19/2020 18:33 | #262942
"Dusty, Sandy Music" would be a perfect title for a playlist of my favorite music from the 2000s. I'd say all the recent feedback is totally valid. This is definitely a heavily Americana-centric chart, especially when you consider that the American hip hop I like probably deserves a place within the genre of "Americana," in the sense that hip hop is the most powerful (musical) medium through which a segment of American society understands the world. I can definitely see the benefit of diversifying my listening to include more of the world, and a larger cross-section of genres. Guilty as charged.
That said, I also like the idea of my charts being a place where other BEA members can find some great Americana, including some deep cuts. That wouldn't be possible if my charts were loaded up with selections popular on other people's charts. Ultimately, I just follow my ears wherever they take me. I'm excited to dig into some of the albums you've recommended, jeitee. I've listened at some point to all of them, with the exception of Grouper. I'll probably start there.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From 
sssvnnn 12/18/2020 16:49 | #262868
sssvnnn 12/18/2020 16:49 | #262868
Very dusty and sandy music - fine.
Now that I know you lived in Nevada I understand your chart better.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From jeitee 12/18/2020 15:32 | #262859
I absolutely loved your opening comment. I always appreciate someone venturing to discover all kinds of music. Decent variety of genres in the list as well. Love the ys representation (my fave of all time!) Here are some of my top 00s picks I recommend which aren't already in this chart. vespertine by bjork for some experimental pop/electronic, madvillainy for experimental hip hop, mirrored by battles for experimental/math rock, dragging a dead deer up a hill for psychedelic drone veering on dream pop, and bitte orca for more experimental pop. Oh and for some more familiar territory, a great indie folk pick is in the attic of the universe by the antlers. Short, beautiful 20something minute piece.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From StefanR10 12/18/2020 15:30 | #262858
StefanR10 12/18/2020 15:30 | #262858
Nice Collection of under rated music
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From 
Boltzmann 12/18/2020 09:34 | #262845
Boltzmann 12/18/2020 09:34 | #262845
I don't like the albums I know, and I tried The Dirty South by Drive-by Truckers, and let's say I liked the cover art more (but I didn't hate the music to be honest). However, I'm glad that you use this site what it's for, and then I don't mind that I don't have your taste.
I like that you made a chart of albums you liked. There's not too many of the usual albums so I have something to explore; yet you don't fill your chart with obscure picks, so I don't know what you like.
However, what I do not like is that you really only seem to switch between two or three genres, and they're all very American. Would be great if you let go of that.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From buzzdainer 03/17/2019 21:59 | #233700
buzzdainer 03/17/2019 21:59 | #233700
Thanks Gowi, ExTeaSea, and LebowskiRams, for stopping by to make a comment. Though our charts are all quite different, it's interesting to see that one band we call agree on from this era is Modest Mouse. To be totally honest, I'm not sure how well they've aged for me over the past fifteen years or so, but then again, I really haven't listened to them a lot lately. Makes me want to give them another listen on this lazy spring break Sunday afternoon to see if they have the same impact on me that they did when I first heard them. Thanks, y'all, for the trip down memory lane!
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From 
mickilennial 03/08/2019 18:11 | #233221
mickilennial 03/08/2019 18:11 | #233221
An interesting portrait of the records that mean the most to you of this era, but I can't help but smile with such support for alt-country and lesser known reformists of folk music during an era where country itself had gone "plastic".
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From 
ExTeaSea 03/07/2019 02:37 | #233167
ExTeaSea 03/07/2019 02:37 | #233167
Love that you have Blackalicious, Caribou and My Morning Jacket. Cool chart.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
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