The Decade's 50 Most Important Recordings

Over the past few months, contributors to NPR Music have been combing their collections, reading listener nominations and putting together a list of the Decade's 50 Most Important Recordings. Not our favorites, but the music that made an impact.

Here's the full alphabetical list:

John Adams: On The Transmigration Of Souls
Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion
Arcade Fire: Funeral
The Bad Plus: These Are The Vistas
Beyonce: Dangerously In Love
Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago
Bright Eyes: I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
Burial: Untrue
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: S/T
Kelly Clarkson: Breakaway
Coldplay: A Rush Of Blood To The Head
Danger Mouse: The Grey Album
Death Cab For Cutie: Transatlanticism
The Decemberists: The Crane Wife
Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP
The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
Osvaldo Golijov: La Pasion Segun San Marcos (Saint Mark's Passion)
Green Day: American Idiot
Iron And Wine: Our Endless Numbered Days
Jay-Z: The Blueprint
Norah Jones: Come Away With Me
Juanes: Fijate Bien
LCD Soundsystem: Sound Of Silver
Lil' Wayne: Tha Carter III
Little Brother: The Listening
Yo-Yo Ma: Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet
Mastodon: Leviathan
M.I.A.: Kala
Jason Moran: Black Stars
OutKast: Stankonia
Brad Paisley: 5th Gear
Panda Bear: Person Pitch
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss: Raising Sand
The Postal Service: Give Up
Radiohead: In Rainbows
Radiohead: Kid A
Shakira: Fijacion Oral, Vol. 1
Sigur Ros: ( )
Britney Spears: In The Zone
Sufjan Stevens: Illinois
The Strokes: Is This It
The Swell Season: Once Soundtrack
Ali Farka Toure & Toumani Diabate: In The Heart of the Moon
TV On The Radio: Return To Cookie Mountain
Various: Garden State Soundtrack
Various: O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack
Kanye West: The College Dropout
The White Stripes: White Blood Cells
Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Amy Winehouse: Back To Black

Continue reading "The Decade's 50 Most Important Recordings" »

5:22 PM ET | 11-16-2009 | permalink

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The Band I Love Is... Continued

by Bob Boilen

We asked you about the bands you love, in particular the ones you love that few people know about. In response you overwhelmed us with more than seven hundred suggestions.

On this week's All Songs Considered we feature a few of those picks.

One of the songs we wanted to feature was by a Congolese group called Staff Benda Bilili and the song is called Na Lingui Yo. Here's a video:

Listener Wim de Haas tipped us off to the band. He says, "Na Lingui Yo. Song: don't know, but it has the James Brown words sex machine. Hello Bob, I Think you should listen to this unusual band from Congo. Greetings from Holland, Wim de Haas."

Here are the other listener picks I found most interesting, so far, and mostly never heard of:

Continue reading "The Band I Love Is... Continued" »

6:28 PM ET | 05-18-2009 | permalink

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One Of The Year's Most Refreshing Albums

by Robin Hilton

One of the most surprising and refreshing albums you'll hear this year is featured this week on All Songs Considered. It's by an artist who goes by the name Mamer. He's from the grasslands of northwestern China -- a remote area where, he says, many people live as nomads.

Continue reading "One Of The Year's Most Refreshing Albums" »

2:28 PM ET | 05- 4-2009 | permalink

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Lesser-Known Love Songs: Listener's Choice

by Bob Boilen

On this week's episode of All Songs Considered, we're looking for love in the form of a song. There are 7,458,934,123 love songs in the world, and that grows by 780 every hour. And, though I made all that up, it probably isn't far from the truth.

The simple fact about love songs is that we often hear the same ones. So on this week's show and on this blog, we're asking you to tell us your favorite lesser-known love song. If you have a link for the song, please put it in your post.

Here's one of mine that didn't make it into the show; it's by a band called The Flame from an album of the same title. This South African band was "discovered" by The Beach Boys' Carl Wilson. A few members of The Flame would wind up playing with The Beach Boys on the albums Carl and the Passions, and what I consider the last great Beach Boys record, Holland.

The song, which I dubbed from a vinyl LP, is called "Another Day Like Heaven."

So what are your little-known favorites?

1:57 PM ET | 02- 9-2009 | permalink

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Well, That Was Fun: 2008

by Bob Boilen

What sparked a blind man to tour the country and play his mountain music?

How did Justin Vernon convince his former guitar student to drop out of school and start a band?

How did an African lawyer become a legendary guitarist?

Was Randy Newman's love for music and film the result of nature or nurture?

Which artist loves both Scritti Politti and folksinger Anne Briggs?

What inspires Thom Yorke's musical ideas?

Those are some of my favorite interviews of 2008. And here are a few concerts that are worth the time:

Jim James in a church at the SXSW music festival was magic.

Lightspeed Champion on a lawn in Austin, which was absolutely charming (scroll down this page to watch the video).

Dr. Dog, a six-piece band, playing at my tiny desk.

Sam Phillips, also at my desk.

Nellie McKay, creating a song before our eyes.

Tom Waits, on stage in Atlanta.

And, of course, Radiohead at the Santa Barbara Bowl, the absolute musical highlight of the year and one of the best in my life.

But what gets me smiling every day are your email messages, the blog posts, Facebook messages and tweets.

From the hell and praise you tossed our way for our '80s show to the list you compiled for the year's best music, you are the best audience.

This week, we start our 10th year. When I started this show in 2000, it was a miracle for a small team of us to put out one show every three weeks. The original shows were multimedia; every song was accompanied by a slide show with a story about the artist that included pictures. Often, our overly enthused ideas choked the bandwidth of a mostly 28k audience, but the notes of encouragement kept us going.

This year, Robin Hilton and I put together roughly 50 All Songs Considered regular shows; about 50 concerts for streaming and/or podcast, including the launch of video with theTiny Desk Concerts series; and about 40 interviews, including DJ shows by Randy Newman, Thom Yorke and Portishead. There is also Second Stage, our show for great unknown, often times unsigned musicians and there were more than 200 new songs from on Second Stage.

We also launched a new series aimed at letting you hear entire new albums before their release. We started with Bob Dylan, then Neil Young and then Paul McCartney; early in 2009, we'll preview new albums from Andrew Bird, M. Ward, Animal Collective and Bruce Springsteen.

For each, we're going to try having a Listening Party with a chat room, and maybe even get some of the artists to join us for those discussions. It's all a work in progress, and it'll take shape with ideas that come from all of us; it'll get better with your feedback. If you've never written to us before, join the community. It's a pretty great bunch of music lovers.

Thank you, and happy new year.

3:36 PM ET | 12-30-2008 | permalink

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Chat About The Top 25 NPR Listener Picks

All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen, Song of The Day editor Stephen Thompson, and Monitor Mix blogger Carrie Brownstein chat about the Top 25 NPR listener picks for the year's best albums:

10:12 AM ET | 12-16-2008 | permalink

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Complete Poll Results: NPR Listeners Pick 2008's Best Music

by Bob Boilen

NPR listeners cast tens of thousands of votes in the All Songs Considered music poll. You nominated 100 albums, and we've added up the votes.

You can listen to songs from the Top 25 CDs of the year by going here or subscribing to the podcast.
We will have a live chat about the poll December 16th at 2pm EST. Check here for more information on Tuesday.

What do you think of this list? Add your comments to the blog.

I also wondered where the bands nominated in our poll came from. I put this together, so feel free to comment or correct me on this. You can also go to our archive of any band on the map.
It's fun, but Montana, Idaho, Utah and Nevada didn't produce a single band on the map. Let's make this a priority for 2009! Anyone know a world-class band from that region?

View Larger Map

3:38 PM ET | 12-15-2008 | permalink

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Five Recordings To Hear Before You Die

by Robin Hilton

Let's say you've got 24 hours to live. Forget all your unfulfilled dreams, the countries you haven't visited, the people you haven't seen. We're going to use these precious few hours left to listen to some music. So close the bedroom door, put on your headphones and grab the five CDs you simply must hear. What will you choose?

Music reviewer and author Tom Moon took on this challenge (though he gave himself a lot more wiggle room) for his new book, 1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die: A Listener's Life List. After four years of writing and researching and digging through countless albums, Tom produced an impressive tome -- nearly 900 pages of artists, LPs and songs, as well as a detailed explanation of how each of them wound up on the list.

The book showcases a lot of the albums you'd expect to see: Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde or Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, for example. But unless you're a music scholar, you probably haven't listened to -- or even heard of -- the vast majority of them.

On our latest episode of All Songs Considered, we talk with Tom about his book and listen to some of the amazing music he selected. You can also tell us your must-hear albums. You're more than welcome to give us a thousand, but I thought we'd keep it simple and ask for five. Be sure to tell us a little bit about why you picked them and include a recommended track.

A few things to keep in mind while making your picks: These aren't necessarily your all-time favorite albums. And they don't have to represent a broad range of genres or eras. These are just five albums you love and think people need to hear.

Here's one take on it (alphabetically):

Vic Chesnutt: West of Rome
Yeah, yeah, I mention Vic all the time. But, really, this is a rare album, and if you don't have it, you should get it. West of Rome is everything music should be: surprising, artful, beautiful, ugly, joyful, sad and entirely original. Listen to the title track.

Five Eight: The Good Nurse
This band struggled for many years to have a hit record. When its members finally gave up trying and decided to just do what they wanted, they came up with this little masterpiece. The Good Nurse is a concept album. Its songs take on many unpredictable forms; they're inspired and, at times, heartwrenching. If you're not teary-eyed by the end of the last song, singer Mike Mantione's elegy to a dying grandmother, check to make sure you have a pulse. "Off Season" or "Florence" are both good starting points.

Tim Hecker: Haunt Me, Haunt Me, Do It Again
I can imagine spending my last hour on earth listening to this one. Tim Hecker makes instrumental music that's incredibly three-dimensional, with the strangest, richest textures you can imagine. Put on your headphones and get lost in the opening track, "Music For Tundra Pt. 1."

Billie Holiday: The Complete Decca Recordings
I've told friends that I think this compilation represents the pinnacle of Western civilization. It's an exaggeration, of course. But then again... Holiday recorded for Decca from the mid-'40s until about 1950, which was when she was at the height of both her popularity and her gifts as a singer; this collection contains her finest recordings. Holiday often recorded her songs in a single take, and this collection includes a few incredible and rare moments in which she stops the performance, chats with the band about what went wrong, and starts again. My favorite track is "Sweet Hunk of Trash," with Louis Armstrong.

Jay-Z and DJ Danger Mouse: The Grey Album
I was going through my iTunes library, and it seemed criminal not to include a Beatles record, and there were a number of amazing hip-hop albums that popped up as candidates. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone. Besides, this really is a mind-blowing, brilliant mashup of two incredible albums. I still can't believe how well they work together. Listen to "99 Problems" mixed with "Helter Skelter." (You'll have to search for a copy online somewhere, since it was never released because of obvious legal conflicts.)

Yours?

4:36 PM ET | 10- 8-2008 | permalink

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Shout Out For Some Rock Nerd Help

by Bob Boilen

Will Sheff plays DJ on All Songs Considered this week. Will is the songwriter and guiding light for Okkervil River.

One of the songs Will picked was by a group called The Penetrators. He thinks the band is from Syracuse, and says they might be an old soul band or garage rock band, but there's very little information out there about the group. We've seen a live album by The Penetrators on the Web. But the song Will played is from an old 45 he got from a collector friend down in Austin.

The song is called "The Scandalizer."

We want to know:

1. Who are The Penetrators?
2. Who wrote the song?
3. Who is singing?
4. Who is Curtis Seals?
5. When and where was this recorded?

Help us solve the mystery.

"Scandalizer"

2:42 PM ET | 09-29-2008 | permalink

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