Recently in Best of the Decade Category

The end of a year — even moreso, the end of a decade — is an excellent time to take stock in our lives, to see where we are now, how we got here and where'd we'd like to be in another 10 years' time.

We asked some of country music's most beloved artists about their favorite albums from the past decade (or, if they preferred, the past year), and we were surprised by some of the out-of-the-box answers. We also asked about those pesky New Year's resolutions. Here's what they said.

Watch as Thomas and Christian of Phoenix share their thoughts on the decade in music - specifically, why the 2000's totally ruled and the 1990's totally didn't.

Have you seen the rest of our Best of the Decade interviews? Watch The xx, Gossip, Snow Patrol and more tell you about their favorite albums of the last decade for Rhapsody's On the Record video series.

What's the fuss all about? Decide for yourself. As always, you can listen to all these albums by simply signing up for a free Rhapsody trial subscription.

Civil rights and political protest movements across the world have inspired some of history's greatest popular music: the labor-minded folk music through which Woody Guthrie rose to fame, the countercultural rock response to the Vietnam War and, of course, the rich and moving repertoire of the 1960s Civil Rights era. In the first decade of the new millennium, the gay rights movement (itself dominated in large part by the fight for marriage equality) picked up where these earlier campaigns left off, with battles waged in courtrooms, the legislature, in the court of public opinion and even in the streets in the form of massive protests.

Like earlier civil rights eras, the LGBT equality movement has been omnipresent in the media, passionately fought and even more passionately debated. And yet, unlike these earlier movements, it has not been closely associated with a particular musical soundtrack, which is actually pretty strange considering what an out and proud presence (well, relative to other decades, anyway) the LGBT community had in '00s popular culture. The 1990s saw a lot of very big Headliner Gays come out, which in turn prompted the culture industry to attempt to capitalize on the whole post-Elton, post-Ellen, post-Melissa, post-George Michael, post-Will and Grace openness to LGBT culture. And yet, that growing interest and acceptance somehow didn't quite translate into the kind of "gay sound" the industry aimed for -- or a cogent musical voice for the LGBT rights movement. We set out to figure out why.

Over in the indie-gay trenches, a few bands attempted to politicize their sound -- or perhaps more accurately, to create a socially conscious soundtrack for the movement. Le Tigre debuted in 2004 on a major label with This Island, which included tracks like "Viz" that addressed the need to shine light on LGBT issues. Gossip's 2006 tune "Standing in the Way of Control" contained some subtle references to the marriage equality movement, and Tegan and Sara made things a bit more explicit with "I Was Married" from 2007's The Con (though the Canadian sisters have it a little easier than their American fans). And yet, somehow these tunes, with their (maybe too?) subtle messages never had the same kind of volume that, say, a political protest or even a Pride float of be-thonged boys had. Sure, many classic civil rights songs aren't explicitly political, so in some ways these songs are very much in keeping with pop-fare-turned-protest-music like "Respect" or "I've Been Loving You Too Long" or "Blowin' in the Wind." But last I checked, no one was exactly holding hands and marching on Washington while singing "Standing in the Way of Control." It just doesn't have that kind of presence.

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As the year 1999 drew to a close, Christian music was receiving greater exposure than ever before, thanks to the crossover success of acts like Jars of Clay, P.O.D. and Amy Grant. As the new millennium dawned, though, the industry’s future became shaped more by issues facing all artists, regardless of genre: digital downloading, the death of the video age and September 11th. Christian music fans flocked to worship collections for comfort in the wake of the terrorist attacks, along with spiritual mainstream releases like U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind and the late Jeff Buckley’s cover of “Hallelujah.” As the decade continued, the lines between worship, gospel, CCM and Christian rock continued to blur. With lower budgets and fewer sales through traditional routes came more freedom for artists who took to the Web to promote themselves in new ways. From the tons of great music released since the clock struck midnight on December 31, 1999, and we bid goodnight to the last century, here are our decade-defining picks.

If you're a purist, then many of the jams you're about to encounter are going to confound, maybe even offend, you. And that's because I have a very liberal (some would say skewed) definition what constitutes roots music. Fellow Rhapsody scribe Chuck Eddy once used the phrase "art country" to describe my aesthetic sensibilities. And he's right. I love rootsy stuff, but I also love psychedelic weirdness and underground-bred eccentricities. The aughts were a pretty darn good decade for the intersection of these various proclivities. With the alt-country movement fragmenting and thus relinquishing its grip on the basic concept of a non-mainstream folk-based genre (however nebulous), the playing field opened up for a new breed of earthy oddball. A lot of these youngbloods — more influenced by the progressive folk of John Fahey and classic British folk-rock than, say, anybody from the Uncle Tupelo camp — belonged to the "freak-folk" and "new weird America" trends. Yet there were just as many who had no hip affiliation, who weren't freakers at all. Groups like the Moondoggies, D. Charles Speer & the Helix and Flying Canyon emerged and simply used ancient threads to weave something new and really quite edgy.

One major influence on 21st-century "art country" that cannot be ignored is the emergence of the reissue. Dozens upon dozens of artists lost to history for one reason or another were unearthed and embraced by young peeps who liked the idea of vintage hippie and folk music but who had long ago grown tired of hearing from the usual suspects. Nowadays, if you ask some alternative/indie type who their fave old-school songbirds are, he or she just might rattle off the names Vashti Bunyan, Karen Dalton and Judee Sill before even mentioning Joni Mitchell, who used to totally own the hippie-songstress archetype. What's remarkable about Vashti's case in particular is how the reissue of her 1970 album, Just Another Diamond Day, actually led to her collaborating with those furry little creatures in Animal Collective (whose Campfire Songs looks out over "art country" from a rocky bluff -- in sight, but distant). In a sense the reissue revolution of this decade played a similar role to that of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music in that both retrieved forgotten history and reinterpreted it for a new generation of musicians. Deeply inspired, they used this information to spawn new sounds, new ideas -- and new jams!

Of course, there's no denying the classics when you hear them, which is why my list is also home to Chatham County Line, Charlie Parr, the Black Twig Pickers and even bluegrass icon (and all-around god) Del McCoury. These are artists who make excellent American folk music that hovers just outside time.

Now my list of the 25 best "art country" albums of decade is collected below. But before taking a look, I need to tell you something. And yes, I sound like a corporate drone. However, what I dig about Rhapsody (I'm both customer and employee) is that I've consumed very nearly every single artist, album and song you're reading about simply by using our service. I think that's super cool. Not to sound crass and commercial, but hell, you should check out our free trial. Seriously.

One more thing: Here's my Roots' Best Albums of the Decade album list. Dig it!  

RHAPSODY'S TREND INDEX
by Stephanie Benson and Nick Dedina
Beards! Happy ladies! Bearded happy ladies! Our Best of Decade Trend Index has it all (OK, admittedly not the latter; that would be weird). To get the skinny on the hottest trends that swept the music landscape these last 10 years - robots! Canadians! Canadian robots! (Celine Dion counts, right?) -- you need only click one place. This place




What I Learned While in Thailand Writing about Music for Three Years by Mike McGuirk
As a rock writer, I'm "supposed" to have a critical ear that largely dismisses mainstream music, and whether or not I agree with this, the fact is I tend to ignore popular bands, and always have. Now, for a good portion of this past decade I was entirely cut off from the Western world, in Bangkok, Thailand, but with this same job, namely writing about mainstream American music...Read More



Country Music Has a Tea Party: A Decade of Backlash and Resentment by Chuck Eddy
Strangely enough, one of the most influential songs of the '00s may have come out in 1981. Hank Williams, Jr.'s "A Country Boy Can Survive" is basically a doomsday sermon about how the big city is going to hell...Read More






What's in a Name? The Decade in Rock Monikers
by Philip Sherburne
Band names felt more potent than ever this decade—less like traditional monikers than runic incantations, code words almost uncannily attuned to the zeitgeist. As the circulation of information sped up in the '00s, band names still felt like brands, but they also often felt like memes, supercharged flashes of the collective...Read More




Best '00s Albums That Fell Through the Cracks
by Chuck Eddy
The most relevant fact about music in the '00s was the sheer volume of it that came out, as digital technology democratized recording and distribution down toward individual-artist level. Most conservative estimates cite a figure somewhere in the 30,000-albums-per-year range in the U.S. alone, which computes to 300,000 over the entire decade...Read More


Identity Politics, Pink-Face and Provocation:
LGBT Pop in the 2000s by Rachel Devitt
Civil rights and political protest movements across the world have inspired some of history's greatest popular music: the labor-minded folk music through which Woody Guthrie rose to fame, the countercultural rock response to the Vietnam War and, of course, the rich and moving repertoire of the 1960s Civil Rights era. In the first decade of the new millennium, the gay rights movement picked up where these earlier campaigns left off...Read More



Memory Tapes by Rhapsody Editorial Staff
We have to come clean to you: we’re music critics. It’s our job to take a piece of music and try to determine its potential commercial impact, its cultural relevance, its aesthetic fortitude and its historical context. In short, we study it obsessively...Read More

Heavy metal has dominated other decades, both commercially and stylistically, with the 1980s being its big decade thanks to the rise of hair metal and the birth of thrash. The '90s saw a major flowering of ideas with black metal, death metal and grindcore all emerging/maturing. The first decade of the new millennium, however, has seen an unprecedented growth in commercial and critical (!) success and in a machine-gun spray of variations, from highly experimental combinations of extreme metal (deathgrind), to a reaffirming of the ancient arts (modern power/fantasy metal). There is even a sort of hipsterization happening (post-metal). To some, this is a golden age of metal, seeing their beloved genre get the recognition it has traditionally been denied. For others, it appears as the unmistakable watering down of what they once held dear. Then there are people who really, really like Eyehategod. Anyway, here is our list of the best metal albums from the past decade. Have fun getting angry at it because Dillinger Escape Plan’s Calculating Infinity isn’t on here (it came out in 1999) — and don’t forget to sign up for a subscription to Rhapsody if you haven’t already.

We have to come clean to you: we’re music critics. It’s our job to take a piece of music and try to determine its potential commercial impact, its cultural relevance, its aesthetic fortitude and its historical context. In short, we study it obsessively.

But there’s a definite disconnect between how we process music and how our audience generally uses music. For most people, music is a personal affair. They live with it, get wasted with it, cry over it and make love to it. So we asked our geek squad to take a step back, put down the stethoscopes and measuring beacons, and share what music has meant to them personally during the last decade. Maybe you have similar experiences: that one, mind-bending show you’ll never forget; hearing a certain life-changing song for the first time; or even those serendipitous moments when life and music perfectly sync up to create meaning in that one perfect moment. This isn’t so much the story of music this decade as it is our story (and hopefully, your story as well) told through the memories that music provided. Be sure to click through all three parts as we track the decade that was.

When all is said and done — when the last slice of pizza's gone cold and the beers have gone warm and the editorial staff has left the room fatigued and confused — a list of the Best 100 Tracks of the decade has to speak for itself. Still, though, we're writers and categorizers and, well, music fans here at Rhapsody; in short, we blather. So a few words: it was decided only one track per artist, and yes, choosing between "B.O.B." and "Hey Ya" was exceedingly difficult. Initially, ballots were submitted; we then took the results of that balloting and used them to form the starting point of our marathon discussions, of which this list is ultimately the product of -- the aforementioned fatigue, yes, but also a single music-loving group's 10 years' worth of passion and contemplation, as shot through a cannon of caffeine, closed doors and deadlines. We hope you enjoy; whether you do or do not, please comment. As always, you can hear any track on this list — heck, you can hear every track on this list — by simply signing up for a free Rhapsody trial subscription.

Shock and Awe: Life Inside the Bubble

SF grindcore act Burmese played with this Virginian pro-tree metal band, Face Down in Sh*t. After Face Down's set, their girlfriends all sat down on the floor in front of where Burmese set up, in front of the stage. This was a bad idea because Burmese were known for charging into the audience, but nobody said anything to the girls. Burmese played for about 10 seconds before Mike, the bassist, began stomping on girls. He ended up tangled among them and their suddenly very angry boyfriends. One of the Virginians grabbed him and punched his face so hard that his glasses came off and he went sprawling and all his pedals came unplugged. He plugged them back in and charged back into the pit, and this time, he was thrown into the drumkit so hard it fell over. A long buzzing followed, and Burmese lurched into another song, hampered by the fact that these dudes were trying to fight them as they played their show. The set ended with the lights on and scrawny Mike standing there, fist raised, challenging someone else to punch him in the face. — Mike McGuirk

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My first job writing about music was for a listings website in L.A. that paid as if the dot-com boom never busted -- $30 a preview, an obscene amount of money, even by today's standards. Even better: you could write virtually as many of these things as you wanted per week. No act was too weird or rinky-dink or out of the way. So each week I checked the club listings and snatched a generous handful of shows to write up -- an endless procession of punk-funk-metal-ska-coffeeshop-turntablist-jungle-IDM-hop-pop-country. As you can imagine, it all started to blend together pretty quick. I remember working one evening on what was probably my dozenenth write-up that day. Some singer-songwriter dude, had his debut album up on CD Baby, was playing a small club in Santa Monica -- a fill-in-the-blanks type write-up; there were thousands of these guys on the scene in those days (actually, there still are). As I listened, though, I couldn't escape how strangely catchy these particular acoustic tunes were, how curiously soothing and warm and…tropical. Who was this guy? His CD cover depicted him huddled beneath a slicker in the rain with this charming, bemused look on his face, as if he were just longboarding his way through life without a care in the world.  Of course, it was Jack Johnson, and he would go on to be one of the most popular artist of the decade, selling millions of records and becoming Rhapsody's heavyweight champ with well over 30 million streams. Back then, I had no way of knowing how heavily he would factor into my life for years to come, but it was the first week of September, 2001, and the future was a little fuzzy for all of us.  -- Garrett Kamps

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When Katrina hit, I was living in Miami, working as a music editor for an alternative weekly there. Katrina actually sideswiped the Magic City (as MIA likes to call itself) before moving on to New Orleans. The damage was minimal, but the hurricane happened to hit on the week when the VMAs were supposed to take place in that city. The idea of MTV having to cancel its flagship program really freaked a lot of people out. I remember a lot of hand-wringing and anguish when they had to shut down their poolside cabana party and a certain hedonistic rush when Katrina quickly passed on and the clubs opened for business again on Thursday. I don’t remember much between that day and Sunday, August 28th, 2005, the day of the actual VMAs as well as the day Katrina made landfall in Louisiana (blame the aforementioned hedonistic rush), but I do remember a semi-panicked call from my father on Sunday morning, informing me that my grandmother, who lived in central Louisiana, was thinking about packing it all up and fleeing the state. I was concerned, of course, but I also had a job to do: working the VMAs' red carpet. So, as my relatives mulled their retreat, I spent the day shouting out inane questions to passing music celebrities (emphasis on celebrities) and jammed next to a reporter from Teen Beat who repeated the same two questions to passing celebrities all afternoon: “What do you look for in a girl?” “Has a girl ever broken your heart?” It’s not a good memory, but it’s one that has stuck with me. — S.C.

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The first 10 times I played Neil Young’s 2006 anti-Iraq war album, Living with War, were all highlights. I didn’t care how dunderheaded some of it seemed, or how poorly I sensed it would age — it was a perfect expression of frustration and outrage with where our country was and how it was being run at the time. It was also impossible to listen to without wondering why there weren’t more musicians shouting the same things in their own ways. — Tim Quirk

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I remember going to Yoshi’s jazz club right after September 11, 2001. The brilliant, soft-spoken Elvin Jones walked out alone and addressed the audience: “I can’t yet process what has happened. The only thing I can do against evil is try to put some beauty out into the world.” Jones sat down at his drum kit as his band came out, and they created music that elevated the spirit and felt like it was elevating my body — it was more spiritual than any church service. Jones, who played with John Coltrane during his six most creative and productive years, was born in 1927 and passed away in 2004. The other jazz legends I saw at Yoshi’s in the 2000s who are no longer with us include Oscar Peterson, Jimmy Smith, Stanley Turrentine and Jimmy McGriff. They all put beauty into the world. —Nick Dedina


Click Here to Continue to Part 3

A lot of people said that the '00s were the decade the album died. We beg to differ. Song-sharing didn't kill the album any more than television killed novels or photography killed painting. Even in an age of ringtones and track-Tweeting, there's still plenty of room for suites of songs to make their impact, in whatever way artists choose to present them (and they'll certainly have plenty of choices). As we move into that brave new world, these will be the albums we look back on, the ones that bridged a certain divide between the potential of new technologies and the traditions they grew out of. And speaking of new technologies, every one of these LPs — that's long-player, for the kiddies — is yours to rock out to whenever and however you want with your Rhapsody subscription. Take a free trial and see what we're all about.

Laugh, Love, F**k and Drink Liquor

I was about to leave a bar in Bangkok, Thailand, when I noticed the rhythm section of the band setting up was nonchalantly jamming on "Hava Nagila." I love that song, and, on top of this, the guitar player had hip-length blonde hair and was somewhere around 50 years old. Very weird for Thailand. The guitarist started soloing over the bass and drums, and the song began to gather strength. Something was coming, some amazing crescendo. But then it didn’t, not really, and instead the trio meandered. I was about to give up when the music abruptly stopped. A bleat of a police whistle came shrieking out of nowhere and the band growled, "We don't need no education.” The people in the bar went nuts as the Pink Floyd classic "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2" quite literally split the night. And in that dingy bar in Thailand, my belief in the power of rock 'n' roll was restored. Well, not exactly. But it was kind of awesome. — M.M.

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After spending the bulk of the decade living in sprawling cities and blowing out my ears with noise-rock, I relocated to Asheville, an eccentric little hot spot hidden in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. It was here, in 2008, that I witnessed my first Del McCoury band concert. They played a place called the Orange Peel, which was sold out and absolutely packed with an assortment of authentic old-timers, weirdo mountain hippies and everyday locals who grew up listening to bluegrass. Del is a god in Appalachia, and there’s good reason for the deification. To hear the “high lonesome sound” practiced in its purest form is a thing of beauty and power. Though the McCoury group is acoustic, they’re as heavy as any band I’ve ever seen live, a perfect balance of spiritual inspiration and nuts 'n' bolts musicianship. In Occult America, writer Mitch Horowitz explained that the American occult experience exhibited “the ability to believe so deeply in the otherworld that it could be felt as a palpable presence but also to possess the soundness of mind and instinct to … keep hands to work even as hearts soared to God.” There isn’t a better description of a Del McCoury band performance. —J.F.

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In college my roommate and I would blast Daft Punk's Discovery as a sort of ritual before heading out on the town. It's such a minute memory in such a momentous time, but it stands out among the litany of stupid exams and half-baked house parties that defined my college ear. Years later, I caught the French electro pioneers on their Alive 2007 tour, aka the Pyramid Tour. I don't remember the setlist, the crowd, the weather, how I even got home — I just remember the adrenaline flow, the dopamine release, the permanent giddy smile on my face (and I was sober, people). I also have a vague image of a collective mass of popping joints, bouncing feet and sweat-soaked flesh brought to complete submission before two astronauts bopping their heads behind a gigantic Lite-Brite pyramid shooting out neon lasers. I can say with certainty if you weren't dancing, you weren't there. Ask anyone who was afflicted with Pyramid fever: this tour goes down as the best this decade, perhaps the best ever. And, now, my new soundtrack before a night out on the town: Alive 2007. — Stephanie Benson

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I’ve been a fan of Keith Urban since 2002, and it’s been great to watch him grow into one of the country’s premier artists over these past few years. One of my personal highlights of the past decade was being at Urban's first headlining tour. He managed to fill the HP Pavilion in San Jose with hysterical, screaming women ranging in age from pre-teen to cougars (and above), but what struck me most about the show was Urban's extraordinary guitar playing and obvious delight in being onstage. It was easy to see that while he got his country roots from his father's record collection, he learned a few things from Aussie rockers AC/DC. Seriously, Keith Urban shreds! Since that first show, Urban has won multiple Grammys and was named the 2005 Entertainer of the Year by the Country Music Association. I have seen him headline concerts three more times, and each time he gets more comfortable onstage and off. Part of his regular routine is jumping into the audience and giving some lucky concert-goer his guitar. In 2009, I became the proud owner of one of those guitars. — Linda Ryan

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This would have been in January 2003. It was raining in San Francisco and the crowd that had filled the basement venue Café du Nord was giddy and dripping. The headliner was Devendra Banhart. His debut had just been released and word on the street was, the 20-year-old was some kind of mystical gypsy wunderkind. The assembled soggy masses had taken seats on the floor, settling in for what was going to be a long undercard: three openers no one had heard of, the first of which was taking the stage, looking like she'd just stepped off the set of The Dukes of Hazzard (tight boot-cut jeans, a white blouse, rosy cheeks). The girl started off by clapping her hands and singing a cappella. Then she sat down behind a harp twice her size and began to play and sing, and for the next 35 minutes no one moved a muscle. Her voice cracked and quavered and was unlike anything we'd ever heard — mangy and gorgeous, like an alley cat's rendered by Disney. She was the harp Satriani, plucking out dazzling fugues. And the words she sang -- "I do as I please, now I'm on my knees/ Your skin is something that I stir into my tea." This was the arrival of Joanna Newsom; I was told at the time it was her second show ever. Since then she's played to thousands of people all around the world, and released two of the decade's best albums, The Milk-Eyed Mender and Ys. Through it all I've maintained the same reaction to this artist and her work as I had that night: slack-jawed and breathless, deeply thankful she decided to share her talent with us. — Garrett Kamps

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I never went to the club Meow Mix in lower Manhattan very often, it being a lesbian bar and all, but on April 18, 2001, I showed up because my newfound friends in the local Go Gos-reminiscent pop-rock band Lava Baby were playing, as part of a Ladyfest East fund-raiser. The tough woman at the door gave me a suspicious look, but I made it in, got a beer and settled myself into the crowd. Which was fine for a few songs, until the band saw me, and refused to start into their cover of Joan Jett’s cover of Gary Glitter’s “Do You Want to Touch Me (Oh Yeah!)” until I’d climbed up on the stage. So I pretended I didn’t hear them, but they wouldn’t budge, so I finally went up, and shouted a couple “oh yeah!”s and flapped my arms in the air a little. And saw somebody cute taking notes for a website review in the audience. And talked to her when I got offstage. And then somehow wound up talking our way into a Billy Idol show at the Bottom Line to impress her a week later. And much later wound up getting married to her, then having a baby, then moving to Texas. Which must make the Lava Baby show the most significant one I saw all decade. — C.E.

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It was 2007, and the wife and I were honeymooning in Kauai, taking a cruise tour of the Na Pali coast, a stretch on the northwestern side of the island where these beautiful, crumpled mountains collapse into the turquoise waters. There are inevitably a couple of problems that I have with these kinds of tours: the drinks they serve are watered down and sugared up, and the music consists of variations on the classic yacht-rock playlist — Doobie Brothers, Kenny Loggins, Jimmy Buffett, etc. About halfway through this journey, somewhere between “Cheeseburgers in Paradise” and “Kokomo,” the skipper, a gruff man with pinched skin and a giddy, stoned smile, announces that, according to Hawaiian law, he is required to play at least one Michael Jackson album. Our ears perk up, and I immediately pop off the bow and make my way to the Captain’s perch. Do you have Off the Wall? I ask. Excuse me? he asks. Off the Wall, Michael Jackson, I clarify. You know I was just kidding about that, right? he replies. Luckily, I had Off the Wall, on my iPod, and, for the next hour, we sit and listen to one of the best pop albums ever released, while absorbing some of the most beautiful scenery you can imagine. And for a little while there, this decade was really fantastic. —S.C.

Every decade there are cries that jazz is on the verge of extinction. Yet every decade jazz  keeps on keepin' on. That said, jazz was slapped around during the 2000s with the loss of both quality record-store chains (like Tower) and radio stations. Rhapsody is trying to pick up some of the slack and offer a practically unlimited number of jazz albums, old and new.

On the commercially positive side, jazz gave both Willie and Wynton their first No. 1 pop album placements, and it landed Herbie Hancock a deserved Album of the Year Grammy.  Artists like Dave Holland, Joe Lovano and Branford Marsalis released so many good albums that it was hard to choose a favorite, while Andy Bey, the finest living jazz vocalist, barely had the opportunity to record at all. Diana Krall led the jazz pack and Norah Jones immediately crossed over from quiet pianist to pop stardom.

Creatively, the music continues to grow, with a generation raised on the Beatles, indie rock, soul and hip-hop bringing new ideas to jazz (the pianists Brad Mehldau, Robert Glasper and Aaron Parks spring to mind). Collaboration and teamwork continue to mean more than simply soloing. Even former barriers between jazz, bluegrass and classical musicians were broken down this decade, as were the distinctions between the mainstream and the avant-garde (which, sadly, may be because even mainstream jazz is no longer considered "mainstream").

In naming a selection of the decade's best jazz albums I've also named the record companies who deserve a shout-out for still supporting great music in all its forms (from bop to Brazil and soul-blues to crossover). Here's hoping that they continue to do so in the coming decades. I've noticed a couple of trends in my picks: first, jazz artists sure do love to look down and hide their humble eyes on their CD covers. Second, I've often called out artists who use music to tell a story or convey emotions over ones who impress on a purely technical level.

Finally, economics be damned -- If no job is truly safe in our modern world, being a jazz musician starts to look like a good way to go. Its kind of like how your cousin who threw it all away to grow olives in Siurana suddenly seems wiser than your banker nephew who is making millions by losing other people's billions.

While discovering the list below, feel free to listen to these selections from the albums.

From Beyonce to R. Kelly, R&B was dominant on the charts this decade. One could argue that it was pop music for this generation. It more or less co-opted hip-hop and swallowed soul. And while the artists at the tops of the charts dominated the public eye, there were also some interesting things happening in the margins. This list attempts to capture all the various trends and sounds that snaked through R&B this decade.

A rose is a rose is a rose, wrote Gertrude Stein, but in 2009, "A Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose" sounds a bit like the name of an indie-rock band you're likely to find listed on the lineup of CMJ.

Band names felt more potent than ever this decade—less like traditional monikers than runic incantations, code words almost uncannily attuned to the zeitgeist. As the circulation of information sped up in the '00s, band names still felt like brands, but they also often felt like memes, supercharged flashes of the collective unconscious. What else could explain the recent emergence of both Memory Cassette and Memory Tapes, not to mention Tapes 'n Tapes, the Music Tapes, Library Tapes, Eats Tapes, War Tapes, Tapes, and plain ol' Tape?

If you look back over the past decade in popular music, you'll find all kinds of patterns forming around the names of musical projects. They're not just expressions of identity, they're tropes, little kernels of meaning as important for what they suggest as what they actually say. If, decades or centuries down the line, future historians have nothing but our era's band names to go by, they'll still be able to piece together a remarkably nuanced picture of the '00s, as the following examples attest.

Click here for The Decade in Rock Monikers Part 2