the friday "five" | 03 28 25

yet another special edition

What has the last quarter century amounted to? The age of the millennial came and went, as did seven of the least chill election cycles known to man. We all wore ugly baggy clothes, realized they were ugly, and now everyone’s wearing them again. Muzzy. Miranda Sings. “I coulda dropped my croissant.” Are things better now than they were? It’s the wrong question, I fear, if only because the answer’s too fraught to seriously consider. At least twice a week someone walks straight into me because they’re looking at their phone. I’m supposed to know who “Benny Blanco” is now, to say nothing of “Teddy Swims.” Yesterday someone on the subway asked “Who's Mumford & Sons?” and her teenage daughter said “I don’t know”—so if “Little Lion Man” hasn’t made it to the second quarter, what possibly could have? Is there room for Conor Oberst? “Dog Days are Over”?? Little Miss Sunshine???

Getting close enough to 40 that you can see it coming will have you asking questions like this. The decades start to blur and a gentle grumpiness wafts in like a warm pie laid out to cool. How did everything get so much worse? — this question will simmer in the back of your mind until one day it’s at a boil and no other thoughts arise. Every generation goes through this, it’s essential, and some of them (Lost Gen, Millennials, eventually Alpha) are right: everything is so much worse, and that’s a fact. This is why Boomers invented Nick at Nite and Gen X invented I Love the 80s—looking back and sighing is part of the deal, and if you do it right, there’s joy in that (Gen Z’s version of this is TikToks about flip phones, which is why I can never take them seriously).

Millennials, meanwhile, we invented the best of these wayback machines: the viral Best Of list. No one likes to argue online about a Best Of louder and more proudly than a Millennial, and no one has more fun doing it (generation of trolls 😖). What to know the 50 greatest rom coms ever made? There’s a list for that. How about the 100 best songs of the ‘90s? Absolutely. Click here. The 20 greatest Kardashian family fights? 1,000 Vines to watch before you die? 10 episodes of Rocko’s Modern Life that predicted the pandemic? Yes, yes, and yes. If you dream it, you can make it—better yet, if you remember it, BuzzFeed probably already wrote it. When in 2012 Rolling Stone dropped their second iteration of the 500 Greatest Albums Ever Made, I built a whole lit journal around it. When they updated the list in 2021 and put Fine Line, an album that had come out less than a year earlier, at number 491, I certainly had A Lot To Say. And that’s what it was there for; that was Rob Sheffield’s evil plan all along (classic Gen X provocation)—when they updated it in 2023, they simply replaced Fine Line with Harry’s House, crazy not only because it had just come out but because no one is listening to “Little Freak” thinking it’s one of the greatest songs ever written.

But this is what I’m talking about: we didn’t invent the Best Of list, obviously, but we perfected the art of being mad about it, and I think that’s even more beautiful. You have to take these things seriously because they aren’t at all serious. Anyway I was on the train to MoMA last weekend to see All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (boring/beautiful) when I realized we’re at a new milestone: a quarter of the way through the 2000s. My Millennial brain started itching. I pulled out my phone and opened a new Note: 25 years 25 albums. A giddy electricity ran through me, a feeling of fresh and unnecessary opinions emerging that only true list lovers will understand. I opened Tidal, organized my saved albums chronologically, and scrolled to 2000. It was time to make a Best Of list.

My 25 Favorite Albums of the Last 25 Years, Ranked Correctly by Perfect Taste

**Released 2000-2024. One album per artist, though that was mostly accidental; Beyonce or Sufjan might have had 2, but I didn’t think about it that hard. Mostly gut responses all in all. 2017 was a truly insane year for music. 25 perfect albums are hard to rank, but the top 10 is honest and true. Is there any greater album than Time (The Revelator)? Yes, I think, but not that anyone’s made in this millennium.**

1. Time (The Revelator) - Gillian Welch (2001)

2. Emotion - Carly Rae Jepsen (2015)

3. Kid A - Radiohead (2000)

4. Aerial - Kate Bush (2005)

5. Renaissance - Beyonce (2022)

6. Lovers Rock - Sade (2000)

7. A Seat at the Table - Solange (2016)

8. Ys - Joanna Newsom (2006)

9. Fearless - Taylor Swift (2008)

10. Blueberry Boat - Fiery Furnaces (2004)

11. Golden Hour - Kacey Musgraves (2018)

12. And We Washed Our Weapons in the Sea - Frodus (2001)

13. To Pimp a Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar (2015)

14. 1000 gecs - 100 gecs (2019)

15. Illinois - Sufjan Stevens (2005)

16. The Moon & Antarctica - Modest Mouse (2000)

17. Ctrl - SZA (2017)

18. Brother is to Son - Br. Danielson (2004)

19. Saint Cloud - Waxahatchee (2020)

20. Extraordinary Machine - Fiona Apple (2005)

21. Modern Vampires of the City - Vampire Weekend (2013)

22. The Kid - Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith (2017)

23. Gone Now - Bleachers (2017)

24. The Navigator - Hurray for the Riff Raff (2017)

25. We Haven’t Just Been Told, We Have Been Loved - Half-handed Cloud (2002)

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What are your favorite albums from this century so far? Would you have put Emotion at number one (sure), or maybe chosen Lemonade over Renaissance (crazy)? Are you mad at me for including 100 gecs and/or Taylor Swift, and ranking them so high? I’m all ears. Let ‘er rip. Happy Friday, here’s to 25 more years of things getting worse!