Albums of the decade

This past week, NME released its list of the Top 100 albums of the waning decade. Such lists used to drive me apoplectic as I ranted in consternation at the choices made by the so-called experts in the music press. Nowadays, I make do with a superior and knowing shake of the head.

Such lists are obviously entirely subjective and largely pointless. The NME holds itself up as the arbiter of all that is cool on the music scene. But when a magazine's target audience is 15-year-old boys, how cool can it really be?

Anyway, here is the NME Top 10:

1. The Strokes - Is This It

2. The Libertines - Up The Bracket

3. Primal Scream - Xtrmnatr

4. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say, That's What I'm Not

5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell

6. PJ Harvey - Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

7. Arcade Fire - Funeral

8. Interpol - Turn On The Bright Lights

9. The Streets - Original Pirate Material

10. Radiohead - In Rainbows

For what it's worth, I don't really have a gripe with the Top 10. A couple of those albums I haven't even heard and so I can't pass judgement. Some of them would grace my personal list. However, I will say this, The Streets should never make it into a Top 10 of anything!

I'm going to share my Top 10 albums of the past decade. In doing this, you have to realise that tomorrow it could be a slightly different list and in a year's time, it could be radically different.  I had to think long and hard about leaving out Sufjan Stevens, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Arcade Fire, Primal Scream and The Coral. The 10 listed are the albums that really grabbed a hold of me and which have, up to now, endured the test of time.

1. The Strokes - Is This It

2. The Libertines - The Libertines

3. Pulp - We Love Life

4. Kings Of Leon - Youth And Young Manhood

5. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

6. Regina Spektor - Begin To Hope

7. White Stripes - Elephant

8. Richard Hawley - Cole's Corner

9. Laura Gibson - If You Come To Greet Me

10. The Shins - Wincing The Night Away

Post-script

 In compiling this list, I have to say that, upon initial consideration, the past decade seemed to have fallen slightly short when compared to the 1990s. Maybe it was my age and that sentimental longing for my youth but, to me, albums like the Stone Roses's Second Coming, Pulp's Different Class, Definitely Maybe by Oasis, Radiohead's brilliant offerings like The Bends and OK Computer, the exquisite Sleeper album Smart, The Verve's masterpiece, Urban Hymns, The Great Escape by Blur, Belle & Sebastian's Boy With The Arab Strap, Beck's Odelay and Nirvana's MTV Unplugged set seemed to me, as a collective, to have been on a different plane. But having given it deeper thought, I believe that initial impression was wrong. Overall, the cream of this decade is certainly equal to the best of the previous.