Whether another child molestation trial is
staring you in the face or you’re still crying about that
time Jack White beat your face in, there’s no denying that
2003 was a second-rate year for music. While hip-hop and R&B
continued to tighten their grip on the singles market, rock music,
usually perceived as a somewhat unified genre, diversified until it
lost all semblance of an identity. There were mall-punks,
dance-punks, country-punks and people who just plain got
punk’d. Mainstream music took a major hit, with inconsistent
efforts and falling sales. Stronger, more innovative artists that
had long flown under the radar were suddenly hip. As a result, we
witnessed a wealth of new artists and were forced to look beyond
the FM signals to find music worth listening to, furiously adding
it to our iPods. Our lists reflect that. For the first time in
recent memory, no single album distinguished itself at the top of
our lists.
- Kate Green
