NPR:

An important distinction: We’re not looking for everyone’s favorite albums or songs, but rather ones that had some sort of historical significance. These are the game-changers — ones that signaled some sort of shift in music, or ones that were particularly influential in some way. We’re looking for the albums and singles people will still buy, share, listen to and talk about for years or decades to come.”

NPR: The Decade’s 50 Most Important Recordings is the plain, unadorned, list. You can see a written discussion of the list here. They take pains to say that these are “important” choices rather than “favourites”. But, given that they solicited input from their listeners, it’s no surprise that the list plays pretty safely within the limits of middlebrow, educated, white American tastes. Of course, by specifying “important” the NPR staffers get the chance to incorporate a salting of “outsider” stuff. I’d really have to try hard to find ways in which Juanes’ Fijate Bien” can be claimed as influential.

The NME, on the other hand, decides to sit around the pup and scribble a list of guitar and indie rock items on the back of a coaster and give it to an intern for a couple of hours so that (s)he can add some of the “yoof” influence and make sure the items were actually released in the 00’s. Then they spread The Top 100 Greatest Albums of the Decade over a bunch of web pages in order to boost their page view numbers.

Paste Magazine has another, somewhat less predictable list.

Earlier, Pitchfork concluded their 200 Albums of the 2000s with the final 20

Can’t find the Uncut Magazine original list, but Stereogum has the top 20 here

Someone will probably put these all together. If you know a link lemme know.

Oh, yeah, f**k Radiohead