Top 10 albums of the year 2001

Looking back over the year, I have mixed feelings of 2001's music. We had the bloody great (the White Stripes, the Strokes), the usual crap (Atomic Kitten, Blue and yet more Britney) and the downright awful (DJ Otzi, stand up and take a bow). The phrases "the new Rolling Stones" and "deserve to be bigger than the Beatles" were thrown at the Yank feet of the Strokes and the White Stripes. And although I give the Strokes two years at the most, its nice to hear a band that lives up to the hype (except the Rolling Stones part). However the two best and most hyped bands of the year paved the way for a host of new bands which rock to greater or ...  Read the complete review

...and all but one under £10 too! I nearly wet myself when I noticed this category. You see it's a combination of two of my favourite pastimes - music and deliberating! You see I'm a Libra, constantly striving for equilibrium, or at least a new CD! Anyway, back to the task - picking my ten favourite CDs from 2001. From a list of at least 40, I managed to throw some away, as they hadn't been released in 2001. This meant kissing goodbye to Esthero, Jill Scott, Mr Scruff, Red Snapper, Nu Yorican Soul, Lemon Jelly, Kinobe and the Nightmares On Wax amongst others. Of course, I argued with myself about this as they had been my favourite CDs during ...  Read the complete review

It's not as though we need another top ten list, is it? Television in 2001 was full of 'em - from movies to television families and back again. And yeah; they're boring, most of the time. Everybody knows the winner's either gonna be Star Wars, Homer Simpson or John Lennon's 'Imagine'. Lists suck. They're easy, lazy, and in television, cheap. That's why there's so many of them, then. Obviously. But 2001, a year, for so many, of heartbreak and fear, did, elsewhere, redeem itself. Indeed, it was a year when popular music underwent yet more change - suddenly Nu-Metal and Punk were back to the forefront of youth awareness; ...  Read the complete review

Time for another list I think. 2001 wasn't really a vintage year for music, but there were still a couple of albums worth shouting about. You made not of heard of some of these, but they are well worth checking out? but before I list them, I will just quickly run through some of those who didn?t quite make the big golden envelope marked 'Stoffy's Choice'? The nearly pile? Bjork - 'Vespertine' - not her most accessible work to date, it nonetheless marks her as the most original singer-songwriter in the world right now? Aaliyah - 'Aaliyah' - more successful after her premature death last summer, this is a truly ...  Read the complete review

Well, what a year for music eh? Another one of those years where no real scene dominated the musical scene, but instead we had great albums arriving from all over the world. If anything, the American invasion of Andrew WK, The Strokes and The White Stripes, provided a loosely-knit collective of groups making assaults on the mainstream, but on the whole, they received much more hype than actual, recognition or sales. Anyway, let's get onto the music: 1. 'Discovery' - Daft Punk: This was certainly one of the most anticipated albums in recent memory. Their debut LP redefined dance music in 1997, and so critical reception was mixed to their ...  Read the complete review