An Introduction

The Upsides leaked on Christmas Eve, 2009.

Wonder Years vocalist Dan Campbell was panicking in an Outback Steakhouse bathroom (seriously, he wrote a song about it), and I was sitting at my parents’ desktop computer downloading the album that would have an immeasurable influence on the next ten years of my life. I don’t know Dan personally, but I would guess that was as much a turning point in his life as it was in mine.

The Wonder Years would go on to tour the world, release four more albums, and become my favorite band in the process. In the meantime, I was playing in bands, writing songs, and occasionally touring. I was briefly a critic, writing reviews for two music blogs. I recorded and mixed records for myself and my friends. But first and last, I was a fan. All these years later, I still love the feeling of hearing a great album for the first time and letting it wash over me, of a lyric that cuts to my emotional core, of singing along with a room full of people or by myself in my car, of feeling seen and understood, feeling like I was a small part of something important.

A decade-spanning list like this is fraught with complications, biases, and tough questions. How important is a decade anyway? How do you weigh an album with five or eight or ten years of influence against one that came out six months ago? Can I cheat and list two EPs as one album? How do you reckon with the personal significance of art whose work is tainted by the artist’s problematic behavior?

I don’t have good answers to those questions. I just have a list of albums that were important to me over the past decade. These are the albums that soundtracked every significant moment of my life since senior year of high school. They’re in some semblance of an order, although that order gets messier the further down the list you go. I hope you listen and find something you love.

I was eighteen years old, still in high school at the start of this decade. I was still buying every album I liked on CD. I had yet to discover vinyl collecting (and Vinyl Collective). I didn’t know DIY bands were releasing their albums for free on Bandcamp and dubbing their own cassette tapes. Spotify hadn’t launched in the US. The entire musical landscape is so much different now than it was back then, and I’ve certainly grown a lot in the intervening years as well, but it’s still possible for music to move me like it did a decade ago, by the light of a desktop computer, the first time I heard The Upsides.

The List

1. The Wonder Years – Suburbia I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing
2. The Hotelier – Home, Like NoPlace Is There
3. The Gaslight Anthem – American Slang
4. Fun. – Some Nights
5. Jason Isbell – Southeastern
6. Bleachers – Strange Desire
7. Beach Slang – Broken Thrills
8. John K. Samson – Provincial
9. Laura Stevenson – Wheel
10. Jimmy Eat World – Damage
11. The Gaslight Anthem – Handwritten
12. The Menzingers – After the Party
13. Spanish Love Songs – Schmaltz
14. John K. Samson – Winter Wheat
15. The Wonder Years – The Greatest Generation
16. Motion City Soundtrack – My Dinosaur Life
17. Thursday – No Devolucion
18. Joie de Vivre – We’re All Better Than This
19. The 1975 – I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful and So Unaware of It
20. Fake Problems – Real Ghosts Caught On Tape
21. Ruston Kelly – Dying Star
22. Brian Fallon – Sleepwalkers
23. Paramore – After Laughter
24. Into It. Over It. – Intersections
25. The Graduate – Only Every Time
26. The Horrible Crowes – Elsie
27. The Wonder Years – The Upsides
28. The Menzingers – On the Impossible Past
29. Jimmy Eat World – Invented
30. Against Me! – Transgender Dysphoria Blues
31. The Front Bottoms – Talon of the Hawk
32. Bleachers – Gone Now
33. The Hotelier – Goodness
34. Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly
35. You, Me, and Everyone We Know – A Great Big Hole / I Wish More People Gave a Shit
36. Jeff Rosenstock – We Cool?
37. Hellogoodbye – Would It Kill You?
38. Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties – We Don’t Have Each Other
39. The Tower and the Fool – How Long
40. The Hotelier – It Never Goes Out
41. Waxahatchee – American Weekend
42. Modern Baseball – Sports
43. Desaparecidos – Payola
44. Copeland – Ixora
45. The Sidekicks – Happiness Hours
46. The Wonder Years – Sister Cities
47. Taylor Swift – Red
48. The Menzingers – Rented World
49. The 1975 – The 1975
50. Future Teens – Breakup Season
51. Phoebe Bridgers – Stranger In the Alps
52. Andrew McMahon In the Wilderness – Andrew McMahon In the Wilderness
53. The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid To Die – Whenever, If Ever
54. Charly Bliss – Young Enough
55. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
56. The Swellers – The Light Under Closed Doors
57. The Mountain Goats – Beat the Champ
58. mewithoutYou – Pale Horses
59. You, Me, and Everyone We Know – Some Things Don’t Wash Out
60. Joie de Vivre – The North End
61. Julien Baker – Sprained Ankle
62. Frank Turner – Tape Deck Heart
63. State Lines – Hoffman Manor
64. Into It. Over It. – Proper
65. Pedro the Lion – Phoenix
66. Fireworks – Oh, Common Life
67. Jimmy Eat World – Integrity Blues
68. Broadway Calls – Comfort/Distraction
69. Transit – Keep This To Yourself
70. Polar Bear Club – Clash Battle Guilt Pride
71. Vampire Weekend – Modern Vampires of the City
72. Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) – You Will Eventually Be Forgotten
73. The Dangerous Summer – War Paint
74. Japandroids – Celebration Rock
75. Real Friends – Everyone That Dragged You Here
76. The Gaslight Anthem – Get Hurt
77. Guster – Easy Wonderful
78. Titus Andronicus – The Monitor
79. Better Love – We Were Younger and Less Put Together
80. I Am the Avalanche – Avalanche United
81. Brian Fallon – Painkillers
82. Bomb the Music Industry! – Adults!!!
83. Smallpools – Smallpools
84. The Wonder Years – No Closer To Heaven
85. Jason Isbell – The Nashville Sound
86. Los Campesinos! – Romance Is Boring
87. The Swellers – Good For Me
88. Braid – No Coast
89. Modern Baseball – You’re Gonna Miss It All
90. Converge – All You Love You Leave Behind
91. Touché Amore – Is Survived By
92. All Get Out – Nobody Likes a Quitter
93. Fireworks – Gospel
94. Joyce Manor – Million Dollars To Kill Me
95. Hostage Calm – Please Remain Calm
96. Mixtapes – Ordinary Silence
97. Daytrader – Demo
98. Aficionado – Aficionado
99. Counting Crows – Somewhere Under Wonderland
100. The Appreciation Post – Work/Sleep