Officially at the point where everything's a judgement call. At one point or another, I strongly considered all six of these remaining CDs to be my personal favorite of the decade. 'Twas that close.
#6. Elephant - The White Stripes
You just gotta love an album that continually kicks your ass and has you begging for more. In terms of sheer, raw, balls-out-unfiltered-kick-you-in-the-nuts from start to finish albums, I think there were only two in my life: Appetite for Destruction was one. Elephant is the other. Yeah, there’s been other albums that meet some of the criteria, but if you want to go start to finish with each track being un-skippable? This is it.
For too long, producers were getting too cute and creative, making the album about them and not the artist. Sometimes, like in the case of everything Rick Rubin seems to do, it works. Other times (cough: Glen Ballard) it comes across as disingenuous. But not with Elephant.
While “Seven Nation Army” is the most widely known track from the album – and arguably the best song of the decade, quarter century or any other marker of time you wish to choose, in my opinion the crowning achievement of the CD is “Ball and Biscuit” – a classic scotch-on-the-rocks-8-ball-corner-pocket roadhouse blues jam.
The catchy and quick “Air Near My Fingers” is one of those few songs that can get stuck in your head for days and have you not complaining about it. “There’s No Home For You Here” is just a savage asskicker.
It’s hard ranking this sixth, though I feel the same way about the pending numbers 5, 4, 3 and 2. I guess this decade’s going to be remembered for a lot of things: eight years of incompetence, The Jon and Kate saga, the Greatest Upset in Super Bowl History, the birth of Sonic in Northern New Jersey, among many others. But I’m starting to get the feeling that I’ll be looking back one day thinking how it was a renaissance of sorts of music, because despite my inherent desire to say everything new sucks, it’s simply not the case in this regard.
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