My Top 100 Albums Of All-Time: #61-70

70. Gin Blossoms - Outside Looking In (1999)
Gin Blossoms had a number of different hits throughout their career, including a #1 ("Found Out About You"), and two more top-ten hits ("Follow You Down" and "Til I Hear It From You") but to the world at large they're generally considered a one-hit wonder - though weirdly, not for any of their top-ten singles. Instead, the song that springs to everyone's mind is "Hey Jealousy," a song so ubiquitous that a full two years after its release, it still obstinately remained on the Billboard Top 100. In fact, the Gin Blossoms were the first band to usher in that signature 90's alternative-rock sound, writing songs so comfortable and familiar that they would never disappear from radio rotation, even to this day. It's a shame that their songwriter, the oft-soused and troubled guitarist Doug Hopkins, never got to see the waves his music created. He committed suicide in 1993, not long after he was fired from the band, who were so fed up with the music industry that they titled their major label debut New Miserable Experience, which was released to America at large with no fanfare and middling reviews. They had no idea they would end up being the forefathers of a new breed of folk-and-country-infused rock music, eventually giving way to Counting Crows, Toad the Wet Sprocket, the Cranberries, and of course Hootie and the Blowfish. The record ended up going multi-platinum, and by the time the third single ("Until I Fall Away") was released, critics had come around and hailed the record as "pure pop goodness."

I didn't discover the band until much later, when I purchased their best-of record, Outside Looking In, which collected both their hit singles and a number of much lesser-known and rarer tracks. It's spotty at times, but the record takes you back to a different time, when modern rock was an untapped commodity and good songwriting was finally coming back into vogue.

Download This: Until I Fall Away, Not Only Numb, Pieces Of The Night, As Long As It Matters

69. Ryan Adams - Demolition (2002)
This is not my favorite Ryan Adams record, as it's mostly filled with songs leftover from the recording sessions of his far superior works, Heartbreaker and Gold, but like any Adams record, it contains a few songs of such rough-hewn perfection that it's impossible not to be bowled over. Like "Desire," later featured in one of the top-ten "West Wing" episodes of all time (season 6's "King Corn"), and the king of all lost-love anthems, "Dear Chicago."

Download This: Dear Chicago, Desire, Hallelujah, You Will Always Be The Same

68. Copeland - Beneath Medicine Tree (2003)
I stumbled across this record in college, when it spread like wildfire across campus in the way that albums do in colleges these days (God bless you, MyTunes and loose firewall settings). Beneath Medicine Tree is a great album - the only one the band has ever managed to put together - but it still suffers from the same struggles all their records have: it's frustratingly inconsistent. Copeland knows what their strengths are - a band capable of crafting good, simple, pantingly desperate pop songs - but feel the need to try to punk up the record. The result is a vaguely cohesive mixed bag of songs, all of whom were written as simple acoustic melodies and then re-invented and re-layered, occasionally beyond recognition. When the album works, though, it really works, as with the sad, desperate opener ("Brightest"), or its more epic set pieces ("When Paula Sparks," "California"). Despite its shortcomings, the record plays through from beginning to end awfully well, though it's all too tempting to keep skipping back to the beginning of "California" to hear it over and over again.

Download This: California, When Paula Sparks, Brightest, When Finally Set Free

67. Caedmon's Call - Long Line Of Leavers (2000)
We've crossed a line in this list, since I came to this entry and said "how can this be at #67? I love this record!" Then I scrolled up and realized I couldn't move it any higher than I already had it. We've moved out of records I that I merely enjoy and into records with which I have a real lasting emotional connection. As with this record, which has two songs in heavy contention for my favorite Christian song of all time. By far the most controversial record they ever produced, this album came at the height of Caedmon's popularity, and set off a firestorm of fan protest. How dare they ditch their acoustic jam-style and layer in electric guitars and punchy horn solos? Fortunately for fans, the record Caedmon's chose to reinvent themselves on was also one of the best records they ever produced, an album so solidly written it's near-impossible to skip a track (well, maybe the quavering "Piece Of Glass" gets jumped a time or two). Personally, I'm torn between Derek Webb's deeply personal songs of confession and lost love ("What You Want," "Love Is Different,") and Cliff Young and Ed Cash's alternately catchy pop and elegiac dirges ("Love Alone," "Only One"). But then, the great thing about this record is that you don't have to chose.

Download This: What You Want, Love Alone, Love Is Different, Can't Lose You

66. Coldplay - Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends (2008)
This is the first of two Coldplay albums on this list, which is a little surprising, as I've always been a big Coldplay fan, but they just didn't make what proved to be a pretty tough cut here. What's more surprising is how quickly this album rose to prominence in their catalog for me. It's an album that's so strong that even though it was released at the height of Coldplay backlash, people still haven't been able to pick on the quality of the record since it's just such a beautiful recording. It's funny, but even though Coldplay is maybe the biggest band on the planet, Vida is really an underrated record. Working with superproducer Brian Eno, the band strips back all the pounding, semi-melodic piano and overworked lyrics that weakened X + Y and instead create more subtle orchestrations and a grander musical vision. While songs like "Viva La Vida" and "Lost!" have a clear pop radio sensibility, the album as a whole feels like a cohesive artistic statement. And a damn good one.

Download this: Lost!, Death and All His Friends, Viva La Vida, Life In Technicolor

65. Brave Saint Saturn - The Light Of Things Hoped For (2003)
Here's where doing research for these sorts of lists comes in handy - I discovered while looking this album up that Brave Saint Saturn finally released another record! Originally intended to be a "space trilogy," the band semi-disbanded at around the same time they finished this record (the band being a side project of another band - Five Iron Frenzy - that was disbanding at this time, I imagine it seemed pointless to continue), and so it seemed unlikely that the band would ever finish their "astro-rock odyssey," a term band frontman Reese Roper eventually admitted "doesn't really mean anything." The record was the second in a series about space and the voyage of the atronauts of a mythical Saturn 5 expedition, though the record was mixed with songs of all varieties, including Roper's pointed indictment of his ex-fiancé's sudden betrayal ("Enamel") and his memorial to a dead friend whose faith he admired ("Estrella"). A moody and unforgettable record. I'll be purchasing the follow-up very soon.

Download This: The Sun Also Rises, Estrella, Enamel, Daylight

64. Pete Yorn - Nightcrawler (2006)
Like The Light of Things Hoped For, this album is also part of a trilogy. And I'll just say it: not enough artists do trilogies. There's nothing like an artistic statement that says "I'm not just trying to sell records here, I'm trying to tell you story, and I will take six years to do it if I have to." Now, that's admirable. Yorn followed musicforthemorningafter with Day I Forgot, and then this record, through which we learned that it might not be all that fun to hang out with Pete Yorn for an extended period of time, but if we did we would certainly get an epic song out of our experience. I mean, in Day I Forgot, he writes a song about eating a burrito at a 7-11, for chrissakes. Nightcrawler perfectly fits Yorn's aesthetic, though, since Yorn's songs always seemed written the day after waking up from a particularly epically bad night, the theme of this record fits right in line with that mentality. Nightcrawler seems like a record composed at the exact second that you realize that the girl you came there with would not also be leaving with you. It's somehow at all times angry, depressed, vindictive, pleading, and deeply worshipful, which is not necessarily an easy thing to pull off. What's more, it's awfully consistently good.

Download This: The Man, Ice Age, Maybe I'm Right, Vampyre, For Us, Undercover

63. Jack Johnson - In Between Dreams (2005)
Jack Johnson isn't just good at what he does, he's effortless at it. He sounds like he lives in a completely different world than I do, and maybe he does. Imagine a world where you wake up on the beach to a perfect day, every day. You wander up and down the shore, the sun gently winking off the water. Your friends come over and you go out surfing, then you kick back in the shade and let the day wash over you, someone quietly strumming a guitar and humming a tune. Sometimes the mood overtakes you and you all join together in a chorus, but most of the time you lay back in the hammock, the sun flickering through the leaves, and just let the music play. The sun goes down, and you wander out by the water with your girl, the moonlight playing off her tanned skin as the stars come out. You fall asleep again on the beach, gazing up at the sky. Now, that's exactly what this album is like.

Download This: Better Together, Do You Remember, Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

62. Black Lab - See The Sun (2005)
To give you an idea of how long I waited for this record: one of the first CDs I ever purchased was Black Lab's Your Body Above Me, which came out in 1997. I had to wait 8 years for a follow-up record, which is an awfully long time for any music fan, and a touch soul-crushing for someone who's fourteen and has just discovered popular music to learn the hard way that it's never good to hear that your favorite new band is having "trouble with their label" (there's not a music fan in the world who doesn't flinch when they hear those words). Incredibly, the record ended up being worth the wait: not nearly as bleak as their first record, See The Sun was simply packed with well-crafted pop rock songs and heart-on-your-sleeve songwriting. Singer Paul Durham pours a honeyed Brit-whine vocal on top of songs of such desperation it's tough not to be drawn in. It's a rare band who entrances you as much at 22 as they do at 14 (take that, Brian Setzer Orchestra!).

Download This: Lonely Boy, Dream In Color, Circus Lights, See The Sun

61. Collective Soul - Dosage (1999)
I've now reached a point where seeing this CD only makes me think of an argument I once had with a friend, who told me he'd been a fan of Collective Soul since "right as they started getting big," which apparently was during this record. The fact that the band had already gone over six times platinum on their previous three records had somehow eluded him. I could not dissuade him of this perspective. In point of fact, this album was a classic "we're a giant band with something to prove" sort of record: their previous record (Disciplined Breakdown, a growly, early 90's sort of grungy rock record) hadn't sold as well, and there was a sense that Collective Soul was one of those 90's bands that had just overstayed their welcome and were on their way out. Instead, they released an album of outrageously catchy arena rock, with crunchy guitars and unmistakably anthemic choruses - the sort of album that re-invents nothing but makes you say as soon as you hear it "oh, yeah, I forgot how much I liked these guys!" Not that the album was necessarily timeless - their biggest hit, "Run," was part of the Varsity Blues soundtrack, a movie that ages faster than soap opera children - but instead remains perfectly of its time, a reminder of how solid late-90's alternative rock really was before Limp Bizkit ruined things for everyone.

Download This: Run, Heavy, Tremble For My Beloved, Crown

My Top 100 Albums Of All Time (#91-100)

I got linked over to A Special Way of Being Afraid’s blog the other day, where he’s at the beginning stages of his list of his 100 Favorite Albums of All Time. It sounded like fun, so I decided to do one myself.

It turned out to be a lot of fun. Things don’t always end up exactly where you think they will when you start putting it together – certain things you think will end up on the top end up all the way on the bottom, or drop off the list entirely. ASWOBA came up with a lot of rules for his list, which I thought was silly, but when I did my list I came up with just as many: no classical, jazz, or opera, no limit to how many albums per artist (let natural selection take its course), no soundtracks, movie scores, compilations, or best-of records. Live albums are occasionally permissible but not encouraged (I ended up with two).

Most importantly, the list had to be accurate; I couldn’t just list a bunch of classic records and pretend that they’re my favorites - I spent 15 minutes trying to jam Blood On The Tracks in there, but I finally had to admit that it was record I've never really owned, as such. It couldn't just be an older artist where I knew a lot of the songs, I had to know the whole record as a cohesive listening experience. It had to span the course of my whole life, the albums I listened to and loved the most, even if putting them in was embarrassing. I let myself judge the records as I saw them now, but I had to put them in the list if they were important enough to me at some point in my life to merit a mention. You better believe that Chumbawumba’s Tubthumper wouldn’t be on the list if I hadn’t listened to it 6,000 times in seventh grade, but I did, and I loved it, so there it is.

On to the first batch!

100. Weezer – Weezer (1994).
I usually tell people that my favorite Weezer album is Pinkerton, like a good hipster, and for a long moment I considered putting The Black and Blue Album here instead (an inventive internet mixdown of this record and Jay-Z's Black Album) but there’s something so compelling and accessible about their debut. It’s not just that it’s a head-to-toe solid album, but in an era of heavy metal worship and grunge retreads, there was a brightness and newness to the record that you can sense, even now. Songs like “Buddy Holly” and “Undone (The Sweater Song)” were the buzz-worthy set pieces, but it’s songs like “Only In Dreams” and “Say It Ain’t So” that carry the hefty emotional punch of the album, and are what make the record still sound fresh and important today.

99. Phantom Planet – The Guest (2002).
Every couple years, another California band explodes on the scene with their own slight adaptation of that sunny, Beach Boys power-pop sound, and Phantom Planet did it better than anyone. It succeeds exactly where it wants to, as a perfect, sunny pop record – the hooky chorus for “California” became the theme song for “The OC,” which is as pop a moment as you could hope for - and then the record pulls you one step deeper. And then, beautifully, pulls you one step deeper than that, until the second half of the album becomes a dark, eerie, trancelike version of the first, to reveal the flipside of happy, empty pop, without ever losing its inherent listenability. Few pop albums in the past twenty years have been simultaneously bright and depressive, and none have done it near so well.

98. Bleach – Bleach (1999).
Bleach is a band that never got its heyday, even in the Christian circles it ran in. Their records were always a foot smarter than they got credit for being. Their time in the limelight faded much too quickly, and it’s a shame they’re gone now, because there’ve been too few bands in Christian rock whose albums have had any sort of staying power. It’s a travesty that bands like Pillar have received so much more press and sold three or four times as many albums than these guys – especially this largely ignored self-titled record, which wavered between simple, affectionate praise and sprawling odes of self-introspection. It’s a transition between the more simple-hearted offerings earlier in their careers and their more complicated later work, with the album opening with a couple straight-ahead rockers before the album slowly develops into a praise record, albeit a raucous praise record, hitting it’s peak on “You,” as singer Dave Baysinger croons “I found what it is I’m missing: you,” before sighing, “I don’t think my heart can take it.” A maturity found nowhere on Pillar’s Fireproof, let’s point out.

97. 3 Door Down – The Better Life (2000).
Now, this would be the first instance of an album I’d drop off the list if I could get away with being dishonest. I don’t know if there was ever really a point where it was cool to like 3 Doors Down (I think there was a month or two where it was a legitimate thing), but it’s certainly not cool now. Their albums tailed off pretty abruptly, so past this debut it’s all diminishing returns, but truth be told this was quite an introduction. Straight-ahead rock with a crunchy pop sound, The Better Life never missteps from the iconic opening drum line on “Kryptonite” to its plaintive closer “So I Need You.” The Better Life wasn’t the best album of 2000, but it was its most re-listenable.

96. Rufus Wainwright – Want One (2003).
No one’s weirder than Wainwright, and that’s what we all love about him. He always sounds like he’s never listened to any of the same records that most people have, so his albums sound like a weird cross between his dad (quirky singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III) his mom (folk singer Kate McGarrigle) and Il Trovatore. Sometimes it's charming, sometimes off-putting, sometimes both at the same time, but Wainwright has never been better than he was on this record. His first album to really swing for the fences (and you get the sense his fences are further away then most), Wainwright writes an relationship album jam packed with both full-on operatic stylings and folky asides, ending up with a sound completely unique to him. While his previous albums would ignore his homosexuality, and his later albums head-on address it, Want One was the first and only record where Wainwright seemed comfortable with it, writing the sort of brilliant, unconventional album that makes you understand why he’s heralded as "the Gay Messiah" within the gay community.

95. Bleu – Redhead (2003).
Bleu (the stage name for William James McAulley III) is a Boston singer-songwriter who appeared briefly in the national spotlight for one very short second before disappearing permanently, but he left behind one very good record. Dripping with Southie belligerence, McAulley’s vocals are so sweet that they can’t help but belie his confident swagger, and you can hear his self-loathing that his hardened exterior reads a little too “West Side Story” to be taken seriously. In fact, much of Redhead deals with the stripping away of McAulley’s carefully cultivated image, and he digs into his head and doesn’t seem to like what he finds. The album slides from simple, fondly-remembered moments (“Searching For The Satellites”) to obsession (“Watching You Sleep”) to heartbreak (“Somebody Else”) to aimless depression (“You Know, I Know, You Know”) until finally, on the album’s closer (“3’s A Charm”), McAulley finally picks his head back up. It’s a thrill to hear him stumble his way to transformation.

94. Explosions In The Sky – All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone (2007). Someone’s commented to me that simply playing Explosions while doing anything – cooking eggs, doing laundry, taking the dogs for a run – turns whatever it is into a near-religious experience. I couldn’t agree more, the most mundane event seems powerful when it’s scored this dramatically; check out any episode of “Friday Night Lights” to see it in action. As good as their work is on FNL, though, it’s their follow-up here that really brings the muscle. Instrumental rock bands don’t get a lot of play in general, but these guys are so good that the other video editor at my job and I had to make a pact that we weren’t going to use them to score our videos anymore because we couldn’t help but keep using them for everything.

93. Jimmy Eat World – Bleed American (2001).
Jimmy Eat World has released more than one memorable album, but Bleed American is the one that really sticks. Dropped by Capitol Records a few years earlier, the band had been touring Europe on their own dime and discovered that they were a pretty good band when they didn’t let labels mess with what they were doing. Bleed American (renamed Jimmy Eat World after 9/11) is simultaneously a love letter to their influences (Motley Crue, Tommy James, and The Promise Ring all get a shout-out in “A Praise Chorus”) and a coming-out party. The album was a cobbled-together collection of the best songs they ever wrote, but under hipster superproducer Mark Trombino’s direction, it feels all of one piece – a power-pop emo album that wears its heart on its sleeve, and ultimately a stronger record than many of their influences every managed themselves (I’m looking at you, Sunny Day Real Estate).

92. Modest Mouse – Good News For People Who Love Bad News (2004). There are some bands who understand melody and just choose to ignore it, and Modest Mouse always fell into that category before this. Wildly up and down, they were the sort of band capable of crafting lovely, floating pop nuggets that would make the Flaming Lips salivate, but would rather snarl at the world over dissonant bass lines. It wasn’t until Good News that they decided to do both at the same time, ending up with an album that bounces from anthemic frothy pop numbers (“The World At Large,” “Float On”) to growly tunes wishing misery and perhaps death on former lovers (“Satin In A Coffin”). The tone in singer Isaac Brock’s voice hints at tongue-in-cheek without ever letting you know if he’s really this angry or just pretending, but maybe it’s just he knows the songs are so good you’re not going to care one way or another.

91. Nirvana – Unplugged In New York (1994).
Five months after recording this performance, Kurt Cobain would be dead. Much has been made over this final album, and appropriately so – the band played only one of their hits (“Come As You Are”), played covers of songs by bands most people had never heard of, recorded each of their songs in one take, and after closing with a heart-stopping cover of Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night,” Cobain turned down an invitation to do an encore, saying “I’ll never top that last song.” On a stage decorated with candle and a glass chandelier (Cobain requested both, wanting the staging to feel like a funeral parlor), the band stripped back its trademark buzzy angst into raw, introspective pain. When the album was released on CD, one reviewer noted “The problem with Unplugged albums tends to be that, given that their original identity is as a video, you feel that you are not having the whole experience without something to watch. In Nirvana's case, that is actually an advantage, because this particular whole experience is too intense to have over and over again.” Not so the album, which lends itself to constant repeat listening, particularly Cobain’s chilled-out version of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World,” a version so sad he completely outdoes Bowie at his own game.