Tyler: Norman, it was about half past noon on September the 24th, here in 2025, when I casually over Messenger floated to you that we assemble lists of ten favorite albums from the 21st century.

Now, for context, let’s recall that this past summer we threw together top tens of the century about cinema. Favorite movies were discussed and celebrated. We had fun! Terrific time breaking down ten selections each.

Ten albums, then, seemed a delightful move forward, and you said “I could do that”.

Here we are, then, still in ’25, now in November, and we’re kicking off a five (?)-part series detailing not a top ten, nor fifteen, nor even twenty LP collection. No, my friend, herein we begin a breakdown of twenty-five profoundly effective platters of music, each meaningful to us in its own singular way. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

Any die you’d like to cast before we set forth? I absolutely must insist that I have not ranked my selections. Slimming the century down to 25 was tricky enough, and, while my tastes aren’t especially broad, there’s no use slotting this, say, Americana album over a record from a solo Beatle. It’s all relative, it’s completely about timing, and all of it is in one way or another beautiful.

Norman: The idea of 10 movies was easy. The idea of 10 albums was impossible. And even at 25 I’m still wringing my hands about what I’ve left off my list. The problem is simple. Even my favorite movies don’t get watched THAT often, because I’m always going to see something new. But the best albums are listened to over and over again. They dig into your soul and stay in your brain. Many of the albums I’ll list are associated with specific times and places in my life. How can you reject a memory? Or rank it? Not possible. So, like you, I’m not going to try to rank these albums. We’ve got three brackets. 16-25, 6-15, and 1-5. I’ve broken my top 25 into three groups, but beyond that I’m not going to order them.

My only rule was that a band could have only one album on the list. This made a few of my selections tricky, but I didn’t want a list that consisted of only 6-7 artists. Which was, I’m afraid, a real possibility.

Tyler: I mostly cleaved to that rule. A couple of asterisks to come.

I don’t have any rhyme or reason to my brackets. I thought about this, that, or the other as I sliced off this inaugural five, but all of the 25 I’ll discuss are groovy. They’ve all got a little or a lot of memory associated, too, as you aptly note. Because that is what the internet lacks in 2025—pop culture-steeped white male commentators in their forties, free to talk music or movies when not distracted by sporting events, musing wistfully about that time they lost their virginity to Give Up by The Postal Service. No, that was not me.

Norman: Nor me.

Alright, let’s dig in. What is your first pick, Tyler?

Chaos and Creation In The Backyard, Paul McCartney.

Tyler: I mentioned an album by a solo Beatle. It kicked its way onto my list late in the game—the fine LP it replaced will go unnamed, as we designated no honorable mentions—and I double-checked the move by queueing it up for a listen. It wasn’t a disappointment. The work holds up, and I heartily recommend it to Beatle fans hardcore and casual alike.

Norman: We are going to find out over this process that we won’t always be familiar with each other’s picks. This one is mostly a blank for me. I’ve listened to it a few times, but it’s been years. I remember enjoying it, as I have a lot of McCartney’s solo work in recent years. Tell me about Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.

Tyler: McCartney had begun a gently-sloped critical renaissance in 1995 with the post-Beatles Anthology album Flaming Pie, a very likable, hit-or-miss collection of songs that shed the man’s everpresent desire for a top-10 hit, the work residing instead in an earthier tenor than Paul had explored since the early ’80s. Flaming Pie was the mid-’90s, though, and, not long at all after its release, Paul’s adored wife Linda passed away.

It would be six years, then, before McCartney unfurled a full-length collection of original material: the hideous Driving Rain. Driving Rain bottoms out the entire album discography of solo Paul McCartney—it is the fucking worst. Not surprisingly at all, it is the lone release of Paul’s inspired by his second wife, Heather Mills. Marriage to Mills didn’t work out so hot for McCartney, and his modern reputation musically took some of the flak.

It was thus a mystery in 2005 when came Chaos and Creation, though there was a shiver of promise brought on by Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich’s presence. Radiohead were a band sustaining a brilliant rock-topping peak in ’05, and bringing in their producer was a startling choice for Paul McCartney, a musical polymath of some note who doesn’t lightly cede the boards.

Godrich and McCartney clashed. Paul took it personally when Nigel called one of his songs “crap.” Whatever differences they had, though, the results speak for themselves. Chaos and Creation is a tight, impeccably-crafted McCartney LP, lacking in unabashed whimsy, but deepened by a sense—genuine or not—that these songs, these lyrics, are exceptionally-pensive autobiography from an artist not known for candor. It’s catnip for hardcore Beatle fans like myself, and, as such, its inclusion in my 25 felt appropriate.

Choice tracks: “How Kind Of You,” “Friends To Go,” “Too Much Rain”

The Mysterious Production of Eggs, Andrew Bird.

Norman: Andrew Bird is a Chicago musician. Well, Lake Forest to be exact, but we won’t hold that against him. After college my wife and I lived in North Carolina before deciding to return to Chicago to live. When moving into our new place my friend Matt brought along his friend Max to help us along. I had just met the guy, but this Max fellow asked if he could play something on my stereo. It was Andrew Bird’s Mysterious Production of Eggs. This was one of those cases where I can remember with crystal clarity the exact moment an artist registered on my consciousness. The whistle and violin on “A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left.” I had never heard anything quite like it before and I stopped moving boxes so I could hear this new sound. It was indie rock, but I was expecting Marty Robbins to burst out and sing about some tumbleweeds. That never happened, of course, but Bird’s music felt like a collision happening in another dimension. 

Bird has gone on to make other fantastic albums (Armchair Apocrypha, Are You Serious?), but this was the first and the one that has stuck with me the most. I’ll probably try to convince my nursing home buddies to listen to it when I’m 80 and music can just be called up by sending a telepathic command to some device Apple invents in 2060. 

Favorite Tracks: “A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left,” “Masterfade,” “Skin is, My”

High Violet, The National.

Tyler: In 2010, I was 27 and neck-deep in twentysomething antics and ennui, my home base a studio apartment in Uptown in Chicago. Over the preceding couple of years, I’d come to appreciate The National’s fourth album, Boxer, a compelling, moody piece of work seemingly tailor-made for boozy white people living in cities. Somewhat predictably, then, I liked Boxer a lot. “Fake Empire” with its echoing Bush-era despair—that was me!! “Apartment Story,” the couple prepping for a semi-reluctant night out: clearly written specifically for my then-girlfriend and me! The National just had that effect.

High Violet took that to the next level. It hit me where I lived. Each song is a musical beauty, that National production finding a career-peak sweet spot, soundscapes perfectly arranged for frontman Matt Berninger’s low timbre and profoundly melancholy lyrics. It got nightly play in that studio of mine, folding neatly into a routine of beers and bowls and Wii Tiger Woods or Madden, writing whatever I could muster, hours ever-soundtracked by whatever called out from iTunes. High Violet called out a lot.

I revisit the album now and its effect feels so very much of that time. Like many of the records we’ll be describing, it has a flashback immediacy. Sometimes that can be rough going, but my formative days spent looping High Violet weren’t terrible times. I don’t mind the step back. And, really, fifteen years on, what soft-hearted romantic doesn’t think to tell their long-term partner “I was afraid I’d eat your brains.”

Choice tracks: “Terrible Love,” “Conversation 16,” “England”

Control, Pedro The Lion.

Norman: Looking over my full list of 25 albums, I don’t think any one of them even come close to reaching the heights of pure, unadulterated cynicism of Pedro the Lion’s third album, Control. It’s a concept album about a businessman who has affairs and is eventually murdered by his wife. So, if you are looking for a good time, skip this album entirely. The story itself has never been that important to me, though. Rather, in all the darkness, David Bazan’s observations on marriage, parenting, and maybe life in general always cut sharp. They speak of the thoughts we never dare speak (maybe my kids aren’t that great, if this marriage doesn’t work out I can just get divorced, this orgasm that I shouldn’t be having feels like paradise). I find this kind of honesty attractive even if I’ve never had an affair or feared for my life at the hands of my wife. Art is perhaps the best place to explore darkness, because it provides a catharsis that we rarely find in real life. 

I’ve been listening to Control for about 20 years and it delivers every time. Recently I got the chance to see the band perform this album in its entirety. The live experience reminded me that the sound of the record is every bit as punishing as the concept and lyrics. Can’t wait to share this one with my kids! 

Side note: one of the criteria for this list is that the album has to have no skips. This album is an exception to the rule. I skip “Second Best” and the last song, “Rejoice.” They drag too much. The rest of the album is so good that I needed it on the list. 

Favorite Tracks: “Rapture,” “Magazine,” “Priests and Paramedics” 

Leona Naess, Leona Naess.

Tyler: Once upon a time, I spent about eighteen years in the thrall of a musician by the name of Ryan Adams. The less said about that the better, except to highlight this, a self-titled gem of an album by the very likable singer-songwriter Leona Naess, a onetime girlfriend of Adams’s whose relationship with that singer inspired me to pick this CD out of the freebie/review pile at the college paper. Produced by the exceptionally capable Ethan Johns, Leona Naess sidelines the light electronic flourishes of the artist’s first two albums, building behind her instead an earthy, warm, inviting sound. It suits her songs, delicate creatures all, even the oomph of a lament like “Dues To Pay.” Back in the day I tried to score points for critical bombast by declaring Naess the equal of Blue. Like, Joni Mitchell’s Blue. Not quite, of course, as few things on this earth rival Blue. But, Leona Naess is such a good album, an LP I expect to like less as the years go by—it’s got the heart and hope of a Cameron Crowe movie, and I just don’t know how I feel about those anymore—but instead I love it all the more. Special special place in my heart for this one.

Choice tracks: “Star Signs,” “Christmas,” “One Kind Of Love”

Things Take Time, Take Time, Courtney Barnett.

Norman: Great albums come at you in two ways. Growers and showers. Courtney Barnett’s fourth album was a grower. Whereas she had previously excelled with a noisy garage rock aesthetic, here she dials things down. There are drum machines that took me a few passes to get used to. There’re more synths and less guitars. But the core element that I have long l loved about Barnett is still there: the songwriting and clever lyrics that always seem to focus on the mundane in life. The odd thing about Things Take Time, Take Time is that I almost think of it as one big 34 minute song. For me, each track seems to flow seamlessly. 

When people look back at her career I suspect that this album will be looked at as an outlier, the moment when an artist got a little tired of her own impulses and tried something new that didn’t quite work for her fans the same way that her other albums did. But Things Take Time is the album I expect I’ll return to the most. It has a maturity and delicacy that doesn’t always shine through on her other records. 

Favorite Tracks: “Turning Green,” “Take it Day by Day,” “Oh The Night”

Dig Out Your Soul, Oasis.

Tyler: Oasis went through a lot of change in the years following their mid-’90s heyday. I’ve been a devotee of the band since that era, but even I was unimpressed by the lackluster effort behind, say, 2003’s Heathen Chemistry. They weren’t easy days to be a fan of the Gallaghers.

It was such a pleasant surprise, then, that Oasis experienced a serious critical rebirth upon the release of 2005’s Don’t Believe The Truth, one hell of a lean and mean record that established a new era of relevance for the band, and also set the table for the even greater Dig Out Your Soul. The idea of 2008-vintage Oasis may not sound appealing to the layperson, but, rest assured, the band was in top form. The songs are there, too, including a showstopper ballad from Liam called “I’m Outta Time.” Oasis have some terrific albums under their belt, and the two I return to most often? Well, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, yes. But Dig Out Your Soul is the other. I love the thing from top to bottom.

Choice tracks: “Bag It Up,” “Waiting For The Rapture,” “Soldier On”

Puberty 2, Mitski.

Norman: I did not like Mitski when I first heard her. There was something about her vocal delivery that threw me off. And when I first listened to her album Puberty 2, her songs didn’t seem to cohere into anything whole and thematically enticing. But the more I listened the more I came to find Mitski’s flare for the dramatic wasn’t just an artsy facade. She is, among other things, a top shelf storyteller. And the songs, while they may not have aesthetic coherence across the whole album, work almost like a short story collection with each track as its own little universe.

The emotional intensity on Puberty 2 is such that I can’t put this record on just any old time. But when I do I get wrecked. 

Favorite Tracks: “Happy,” “Your Best American Girl,” “A Loving Feeling”

Rabbit Fur Coat, Jenny Lewis and The Watson Twins.

Tyler: Through much of my twenties I dated a wry, wonderful lady who had, amongst other soulful merits, impeccable musical taste.  Early in our courtship, spring of ’06, she gave me a burned CD copy of this album, the title and artists noted on the disc in elegant script. It was a gift for the ages; Rabbit Fur Coat is a perfect piece of work.

I don’t even love Jenny Lewis to the moon and back or anything. That girlfriend and I saw Rilo Kiley live around the release of Under The Blacklight, and Lewis’s onstage banter was a bit put-upon cutesy-pie for my taste. She does frustrating things, too, like making a point of ripping bong hits during an interview, or riddling a very good album like Joy’All with some very lazy profanity. Indeed, the lone arguable blemish on Rabbit Fur Coat is Lewis changing a word in her cover of Traveling Wilburys’ “Handle With Care”—George Harrison’s “fobbed off” becomes Jenny Lewis’s inferior “fucked off.”

But that’s all relative, and I gotta scold myself, because even now, as I work on this reaction, I hear the lyrical dexterity in the final stanza of “You Are What You Love,” and I’m, like, cease the slagging, dude, we’re talking about Rabbit Fur Coat. As noted, it is perfect, its youthful world-weariness and God-angst maintaining their power even as we listeners and Lewis herself now stare down fifty. Lewis is posing questions about a very unique life, child stardom followed by indie-rock titanry, but those curiosities and fears translate beautifully, harkening to religious belief as well as resentment, wondering almost instinctively if there is anything up there, woefully deciding that there isn’t, and then having a few beers and, maybe, calling a sometime lover, even if their lovemaking is best when accompanied by television. The wit bursts out of this record, and even that line-walking cover of “Handle With Care” suits the mood, however tautly the limits are pushed by cameos from Conor Oberst and Ben Gibbard. Lewis is bringing in her friends to evoke a classic clatch of buddies, though, a supergroup our generation knew as kids, thus folding the song deftly into the rest of the album’s anti-nostalgic patchwork quilt of faded romances, and agnosticism on its way to atheism. It’s smart, and it’s special. A wonder to behold.

Norman: As some readers may know, I am a Christian. In fact, I’m a pastor somewhere in the United States. But Christian music usually bores me to tears. I often find myself drawn more, at least in the arts, to artists who wrestle with God, or the concept of God at least. 

I don’t remember the first time I heard Rabbit Fur Coat or even how I discovered Jenny Lewis (or Rilo Kiley), but this God-haunted album has been such a mainstay for me over the years precisely because of the way that it talks about God, secularism, the church, and whatever there might be in-between. There are hypocritical prophets, prayers are being offered as insurance, and no one seems to know where God is. It may surprise some readers, but this kind of bewilderment over the divine is a key component of scripture, especially what we call “wisdom literature” in the Old Testament. This album, though agnostic or maybe even atheist (I’m not sure of Lewis’ actual convictions on the question of God), is biblical. 

The songs sound amazing. Lewis’ voice gets the full showcase it deserves with more minimal song arrangements. The Watson Twins give astounding backup vocals. Why didn’t they do more collaborations?!?!?!?! As it is, Rabbit Fur Coat is a singular album from a singular artist. 

Favorite Tracks: “Rise Up with Fists!!,” “The Charging Sky,” “Born Secular”

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