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September 9, 2008 9:24 PM PDT

Favorite albums for each year since my birth

by Matt Rosoff
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Update 8/7/09: Animal Collective's "Merriweather Post Pavilion" is my favorite album of 2009 so far, and I don't imagine that will change. By the rules of the game, I can't have two Animal Collective records on the list, so I changed my 2004 entry to Arcade Fire's "Funeral." I also made some other changes to recent years' favorites.

I stumbled across an excellent post on Google on Nick Carr's blog today, and scrolling through past entries, found this intriguing list of his favorite album from every year since he was born. A couple other bloggers posted their own lists around the same time.

I'm late to the party, but I couldn't resist--especially since last week in my post on '80s music, one commenter accused me of being in my 40s, and therefore naturally drawn to music of my "teenage" years, the '70s. Close, but not quite--I was a little kid in the '70s and graduated high school in 1987.

The rules are one album for each year, and each artist can only make one appearance.

1969: Miles Davis, Bitches' Brew
1970: The Who, Live at Leeds
1971: Funkadelic, Maggot Brain
1972: Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
1973: Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon
1974: The Velvet Underground, 1969 (This may violate the spirit of the game, but this live album is VU's best record, so who cares if the band had broken up years before? I listen to this album more than any other released in 1974.)
1975: Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti
1976: Bob Dylan, Desire
1977: Fela Kuti and the Afrika 70, Zombie
1978: Devo, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo
1979: The Clash, London Calling
1980: Talking Heads, Remain in Light
1981: The Police, Ghost in the Machine
1982: Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska
1983: Tom Waits, Swordfish Trombones
1984: The Replacements, Let it Be
1985: Love and Rockets, The Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven
1986: R.E.M., Life's Rich Pageant
1987: Roger Waters, Radio K.A.O.S.
1988: Jane's Addiction, Nothing's Shocking
1989: The Pixies, Doolittle
1990: Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Ragged Glory
1991: Ministry, Psalm 69
1992: Faith No More, Angel Dust
1993: Sisters of Mercy, A Slight Case of Overbombing (A compilation, and thus slightly unfair, but it's the only album from that year I listen to anymore.)
1994: Pavement, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
1995: Morphine, Yes
1996: Butthole Surfers, Electric Larryland
1997: Yo La Tengo, I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One
1998: Calexico, The Black Light
1999: The Flaming Lips, The Soft Bulletin
2000: Modest Mouse, The Moon and Antarctica
2001: Radiohead, Amnesiac
2002: Godspeed You Black Emperor, Yanqui U.X.O.
2003: The Postal Service, Give Up
2004: Arcade Fire, Funeral
2005: Wilco, Kicking Television
2006: M Ward, Post-War
2007: Battles, Mirrored
2008: Portishead, 3
2009: Animal Collective, Meriweather Post Pavilion

Matt Rosoff is an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, where he covers Microsoft's consumer products and corporate news. He's written about the technology industry since 1995, and reviewed the first Rio MP3 player for CNET.com in 1998. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattrosoff.
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by sadchild September 10, 2008 10:23 AM PDT
1989 cure - disintegration
1990 pop will eat itself - cure for sanity
1991 marc cohn - marc cohn
1992 tori amos - little earthquakes
1993 ?
1994 nine inch nails - the downward spiral
1995 korn - korn
1996 stabbing westward - wither blister burn and peel
1997 depeche mode - ultra
1998 circle of dust - disengage
1999 tori amos - to venus and back
2000 cure - bloodflowers
2001 depeche mode - exciter
2002 peter gabriel - up
2003 celldweller - celldweller
2004 beastie boys - to the 5 boroughs
2005 depeche mode - playing the angel
2006 ?
2007 ?
2008 one day as a lion - one day as a lion (yeah it's only an EP but it's the only great release so far)
Reply to this comment
by plasticities September 10, 2008 4:42 PM PDT
Not to be a stickler for details, but MMJ - Z was '05. Okonokos was '06, though, and that contains all but a couple tracks from Z.
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About Digital Noise: Music and Tech

Matt Rosoff is an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, where he covers Microsoft's consumer products and corporate news. He's written about the technology industry since 1995 and reviewed the first Rio MP3 player for CNET.com in 1998. He's also a bass guitarist and an avid collector (and digitizer) of LP records. DISCLAIMER: This blog contains the personal opinions of the author and does not necessarily represent the opinions of his employers or of CNET Networks. As an IT industry analyst, the author occasionally agrees to nondisclosure agreements from Microsoft or other companies, and he will not violate the terms of such agreements on this blog.

He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.

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