Favorite Albums By Decade

We all have our own way of looking at the world, and one of the things that doesn't mesh with my perspective is the fascination we see with 'catalog music'. Older music is as popular as anything new, more so depending on the metric we are measuring with, but I never dove deeply into the past. Once I was interested in music, I was looking forward, I was more interested in what was new and yet to come.

That isn't to say I don't like some music from the older days, but they are things I came to through other means. It isn't music of my time, and I sense the difference. My listening in any of the decades before I became a fan is limited, but some of those records are important. Today, let's see which records from each decade are my favorites.

60s: The Beatles - Rubber Soul
Runner Up: The Beatles - Abbey Road

Pretty much the whole of my listening from the 60s consists of The Beatles. Between the production aesthetic, and the place in the evolution of music, not much from that time speaks to me. The Beatles are inescapable, though, so I have succumbed to them as everyone else has. My taste might be a bit different, however. I don't like "Sgt Pepper" very much, and vastly prefer the acoustic nature of "Rubber Soul". There's an atmosphere to that record that sounds more timeless than their other works, and perhaps it's because none of their other records are quite as melancholy. As for "Abbey Road", it's a wonderful illustration of how sometimes not expanding on every idea can be a good decision. I wonder how much better "The White Album" would have been as a medley, rather than a chore.

70s: Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell
Runner Up: Bruce Springsteen - Darkness On The Edge Of Town

The first album I ever heard from before my own existence was "Bat Out Of Hell", and I wonder what it says about me that it remains my favorite. I'm sure it means I'm soft, and far too impressionable. Whatever the case, few records have ever been as important to defining me as that one has, so there isn't much competition in that decade. Yes, it was the era of classic rock, but I can honestly say most of that music is lost on me. Springsteen's angsty, brooding album is one of the few from that era I am attached to. It's a better record than "Born To Run" in every way, and in some ways I feel like it was a precursor to emo. Weird, huh? I could have also picked one of the Rainbow records, but my taste in Dio has shifted toward...

80s: Black Sabbath - Heaven & Hell
Runner Up: Elvis Costello - King Of America

Dio's time with Back Sabbath was a true moment of the fates aligning. All three records they made together were fabulous, but none were ever better than the first. The spark of something new was in the air, and they made perhaps the best metal record ever. Dio was at the peak of his powers, and this statement from 1980 set a bar the rest of the decade struggled to ever approach. On the flip side, my other favorite record from the decade was Elvis Costello's diversion into Americana. I have learned so much about songwriting from that album, and remain amazed by a genre experiment working this well. Apologies to "Reign In Blood" and "Appetite For Destruction", but they can't win here.

90s: Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell II
Runner Up: Tonic - Lemon Parade

Now we get into the tough ones. The 90s are when I was falling in love with music, and they are how I still define myself. It was Meat Loaf here that led me down this path, and that record is still one of the few that sweeps me up i a feeling of nostalgia I can't escape. It's a journey every time I listen to it, and it's become more than just music to me. Tonic doesn't hit me quite at that level, but not only did they spend decades as my favorite band, but this album is the reason I started playing music myself. So no matter how much I love "Four" or "Yourself Or Someone Like You", or can't get out of the dysfunctional relationship I have with "Pinkerton", they can't compete with those binding ties.

00s: Jimmy Eat World - Futures
Runner Up: The Wallflowers - Breach

For as much as I love the 90s, the top two albums on my most recent ranking of my all-time favorites are these. "Futures" remains my go-to album when I'm feeling blue, and one of the few instances where I appreciate that a favorite is an outlier in a discography. I'm honestly not sure it would mean as much if it was followed by another record that tried to do the same thing. The same could be said about "Breach", but it's less an album than a weird collection of poetic ideas. It feeds a unique part of my soul.

10s: Halestorm - Vicious
Runner Up - Graveyard - Hisingen Blues

This is the toughest decade to pick. Since we first sat down to review the decade at its conclusion, I haven't been able to figure out which of these two album I should put above the other. Part of me loves Graveyard too much for it not to win, because it's the sort of album that reaches across time to tie together the entirety of our musical journey. The other part of me loves Halestorm just as much, because Lzzy is one of the rarest voices who can cut me deeply with just a few notes. In the end, no one loses here, but I feel like the decade was more defined by Halestorm for two reasons; Lzzy being a godsend, but also Graveyard owing so much to the past.

And we'll save the 20s for a few years down the line, when we have a better picture of which albums are going to stand the test of time.