Decade in Review - The 100 Best Albums of the Decade
![Feature by InRO Staff: As our favorite (least favorite) New York City slackers once posited: Is this it? After many intense sessions of polling and much conversation and debate over the importance and influence of a given album, we've finally arrived at a list our staff as a whole feels comfortable with (prefaced by some honorable mentions, to further satisfy everyone). And so what was once just a naïve hope for some sort of decade-encompassing series of features on the last ten years in music grew in tandem with our staff (which expanded considerably in the last year) into an exhaustive, time consuming reality. And though a list of this nature is in no way definitive—we could just as well chronicle any given year with the same breadth—we do believe ours represents a nice cross section of the major trends that defined the Aughts. Everything from the freak-folk movement to the post-punk revival is present and accounted for, but we’re also very proud of the fact that under-recognized genres such as drone, noise, dubstep, and experimental-electronic are given their due respect. What you won’t find (thankfully) is that bloghouse/chillwave stuff, or any of the myriad fads that cropped up towards the latter half of the decade, snuffed out by their own fickle fanbase. The advent of bloggers brings us to perhaps the decade's most interesting musical trend: the "indie scene's" crossover into the mainstream consciousness. There were casualties resulting from this progression (indie-rock, in its purest form, no longer really exists following the dissolution of the last few torch-bearing bands early on in the decade), but there have been positive effects, too. Many public figures, such as Kanye West, chose to draw from bold and eclectic genres, a great contrast to the predominant pandering of late-90s popular music—and with gestures like these, the chasm between what’s indie and popular continued to narrow. We have mixed feelings on this development as a staff, and the infighting that took place among us will surely translate to objectionable reactions from readers regarding some of these picks. But try to keep in mind the subjective nature of the thing. This just happens to be how we as a group saw the last ten years in music, and it’ll be quite some time before any of us make these kinds of grand statements or observations about an entire decade again. So, yes, this is it—let’s enjoy the period of appraisal while it lasts. Jordan Cronk

CONTRIBUTORS:
Jordon Cronk (Music Editor); A.A. Dowd (Staff Writer); Luke Gorham (Film Editor);
Mitchell Kissack (Contributor) Sam C. Mac (Editor-in-Chief);
Chris Nowling (Staff Writer); and Lukas Suveg (Staff Writer).
ALSO: CHECK OUT OUR ‘100 BEST FILMS OF THE DECADE’

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[ Honorables .. 100-91 .. 90-81 .. 80-71 .. 70-61 .. 60-51 .. 50-41 .. 40-31 .. 30-21 .. 20-11 .. 10-1 ]

   
   
  

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[ Honorables .. 100-91 .. 90-81 .. 80-71 .. 70-61 .. 60-51 .. 50-41 .. 40-31 .. 30-21 .. 20-11 .. 10-1 ]](7_Decade_in_Review_-_The_100_Best_Albums_of_the_Decade_files/shapeimage_1.png)
February 7, 2010
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