The Best Of 2005: Music

Want to here how the music industry is changing (for the umpteenth time)? I was hard-pressed to come up with 10 albums I kept listening to constantly this year.... but narrowing down a list of 20 great singles was hard. Yep, it's an iTunes world and we're all living in it. There's still nothing better than an out-of-the-blue album that knocks you sideways for 45 minutes, though, and all of my choices have that quality in spades. These probably won't be the ones you'll see on critics polls and Grammy shortlists, which is all the more reason to hunt them down. The 20 Best Singles (excluding songs from the 10 Best Albums, at the risk of repeating myself) boast a lot of songs you'll probably recognize and a few you won't, some from career artists and some from flash-in-the-pans. But they define 2005 for me as much as anything. Besides, any list with Sufjan Stevens AND The Pussycat Dolls deserves some measure of respect, right?
Hope these lists bring back fond (or foul) memories of 2005 for you, and maybe turn you on to some worthy candidates you missed along the way.........
--Rich

THE TEN BEST ALBUMS OF 2005

1. Josh Rouse - Nashville (Rykodisc) The sleeper album of the year. No gimmicks, no tricks, no hipness quotient: Just perfectly-written, perfectly-executed pop music that breaks your heart in a thousand different ways.
2. Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine (Epic). Finally, a break-up disc as messy and honest as a real break-up. More importantly, it casts Fiona's substantial gifts in a startling new light, elevating her from "where-are-they now" status to groundbreaking artist in a single breathtaking stroke.
3. Death Cab For Cutie - Plans (Atlantic). Or Indie Boys Make Good, Part 36. Get over the major-label backlash and listen to this album for what it is, a worthy follow-up to Transatlanticism that retains its spirit of hopeful melancholy from start to finish.
4. My Morning Jacket - Z (ATO). College rock weirdness meets jam-band adventurousness, held together by Jim James' epic voice and rapidly expanding songcraft.
5. Nada Surf - The Weight Is A Gift (Barsuk). Remember when Weezer wrote actual songs, with hooks that stayed in your head for days and lyrics that twisted like a knife in your chest? In other words, remember when Weezer was good? This left-field triumph will remind you.
6. Queens Of The Stone Age - Lullabies To Paralyze (Interscope). Nevermind that it's basically the Josh Homme solo project now: This is prime QOTSA, sludgy and strange and more than a little scary. System Of A Down tried mightily, but this is the heavy album of 2005.
7. Sun Kil Moon - Tiny Cities (Caldo Verde) The gimmick is that every song is a Modest Mouse cover, but the reality sounds like nothing insomuch as a continuation of Mark Kozalek's clear-eyed vision: Haunted, gorgeous songs that float through your head like ghosts afterwards.
8. Coldplay - X & Y (Capitol). Underrated? With every critic worth his salt taking potshots, it's worth noting that Chris & the boys are three for three with this one, and if the arena-ready production lacks the simpler charms of Parachutes, soaring anthems like "Talk" and "Fix You" more than make up the difference.
9. The Mars Volta - Frances The Mute (Universal). Prog-rock comprised of equal parts hardcore and Buena Vista Social Club, with baffling song titles, horror-movie dynamics, and jaw-dropping technique. The only thing more wonderfully bizarre than this disc is how it managed to debut in the Billboard Top Five back in March.
10. Wilco - Kicking Television: Live In Chicago (Nonesuch). Normally live albums wouldn't make the list, but then again, few live albums manage to take a well-respected band's last two acclaimed records and make every song stronger, deeper, and better.

THE TWENTY BEST SINGLES OF 2005

1. The Killers - "Mr. Brightside" A million and one plays later, this clever new-wave update still feels fresh and hummable. Plus, like every good single, it makes you want to roll down the windows and drive faster.
2. Snow Patrol - "Run" In which a relatively unknown Irish band manages to beat Coldplay at their own game with the best Britpop anthem since, well, "Yellow." Honorable mentions to Embrace ("Ashes"), Doves ("Black And White Town"), and yes, Coldplay ("Fix You").
3. M83 - "Don't Save Us From The Flames" The first filmmaker who uses this soaring near-instrumental to score his (or her) own cinematic finale is a genius. And yes, the commercials got there first.
4. My Chemical Romance - "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" Radio fell for "Helena" later in the year, but this driving single--tuneful, catchy, and not a little bratty--sealed the deal well beforehand.
5. Amerie - "One Thing" One Meters sample + one diva in love = One inescapeable summer jam.
6. U2 - "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" In the midst of U2's current victory lap, there are still some pundits insisting the band doesn't write songs on the level of "Pride" or "One" anymore. This is Exhibit A for the defense.
7. Gorillaz featuring De La Soul - "Feel Good Inc." Aging Daisy Age rappers steal the show from a cartoon band as Danger Mouse whips up his take on 21st century booty music.
8. LCD Soundsystem - "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House" Is it ironic or just tragic that this club-banger for record geeks was miles beyond everything on Daft Punk's own new album?
9. John Legend - "Ordinary People" In the wasteland that has become R&B radio, lo and behold an actual song appeared. And the people rejoiced, and waited for other well-composed songs to follow. And waited. And waited.....
10. Rilo Kiley - "Portions For Foxes" The drums kick, the guitars shudder, and Jenny Lewis coos "Baby I'm bad news" with equal parts sensuality and menace: This is the sound of the indie crowd in makeout mode.
11. nine inch nails - "The Hand That Feeds" Trent Reznor may have unfortunately hedged his bets on With Teeth, but at least the leadoff single still kicked like NIN of old, a "Head Like A Hole" for the Iraqi War generation.
12. Kanye West featuring Jamie Foxx - "Gold Digger" In which Kanye stops shooting off his mouth and gets down to making beats like he used to, as Jamie Foxx paints himself into a Ray Charles-sized corner.
13. Foo Fighters - "Best Of You" Because if Dave Grohl shredding his vocal cords for 4 minutes and 15 seconds is wrong, I don't want to be right.
14. Green Day - "Wake Me Up When September Ends" Possibly the best song from possibly the group's best album, with a video good enough to make you remember when videos meant something.
15. Pussycat Dolls featuring Busta Rhymes - "Don't Cha" Take a six-girl burlesque troupe from Los Angeles with only one actual singer between them. Add a past-his-prime rapper with as much street cred as Ja Rule. Cover a song recorded not six months earlier by a (since-dropped) R&B unknown. Throw in some trampolines. Presto! Instant hit!
16. Fall Out Boy - "Sugar We're Goin' Down" Still not as good as Jimmy Eat World, but since nobody was buying Jimmy this year, I suppose I'll settle for the next-best pop-punk on the market.
17. The Game and 50 Cent - "Hate It Or Love It" Before the public falling out, before the crappy movie and crappier soundtrack, this was the peak of Fiddy's year, trading rhymes with his protege over an old-school sample that bumped like the first Biggie album.
18. Sufjan Stevens - "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." Quiet and humanized and all the more disconcerting for it, the standout track from the flawed-but-brilliant Come On Feel The Illinoise!
19. System Of A Down - "B.Y.O.B." From anti-war thrash to frat-boy anthem and back again, with Serj Tankian screaming "Why do they always send the poor?" like John Forgerty with ADD.
20. Kelly Clarkson - "Since U Been Gone" I give, Kelly, I give. Just don't tell those other American Idol idiots where you're hiding all the good writer/producers.

20 ½. Bell X1 - "Eve, The Apple Of My Eye" They're Irish and they have no deal here in America and you'll never hear this on American radio (although you can iTune it, surprise surprise) and it didn't even come out in 2005, but I'd be remiss if I didn't include the one song I listened to over and over for large stretches of my life this year. If there's a sadder song of 2005, I don't think I can handle it....