I intended to pick up my Decades series this week by moving on to 1987, as I dug into the excellent 1977 lineup a few months ago. Then I realized I somehow skipped the final year of the 6’s. So I’m correcting that oversight over the next several weeks and exploring the albums of 2006.
As usual, I will count down my personal favorite albums from the year before exploring critically-acclaimed and/or commercially successful albums with which I’m less familiar.
Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 1996…
#4 – Odelay – Beck
Beck had released four albums before Odelay, including three in 1994 alone, but this record put him on the map as one of the most talented and creative minds in popular music.
Odelay is a glorious smorgasbord of genres, instruments, and techniques. But Beck doesn’t just cram all of those elements into one album, he blends them together in every song. He was splicing hip-hop and country together before Lil Nas X or Shaboozey were even born.
Beck has been eligible for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame since 2019 and was nominated once, in 2022. That’s not a long time compared to some other snubs but he still feels overdue.
The singer-songwriter has had commercial success (a top ten hit in ‘Loser,’ several Gold and Platinum albums), strong critical acclaim, and industry recognition (he has won eight Grammys and been nominated for Album of the Year three times, winning for 2015’s Morning Phase).
David Lynch’s final feature film was his most confounding.
After winning praise for delivering a conventional story in The Straight Story and earning the best reviews of his career with the sublime Mulholland Drive, he returned in 2006 with Inland Empire, a strange and unsettling experimental film.
This is a three-hour movie with no discernible plot. It was shot on standard definition video using a camera Lynch operated himself. He also handled editing duties and composed most of the music. It fulfilled his desire to strip filmmaking down to the basics and make a film in a way anybody with a camera and some willing actors could.
I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that 2005 is nearly 20 years ago. That was the first thought I had when I started prepping for my latest installment of the Decades series, wherein I look back on my own favorite albums from a particular year as well as highly-regarded albums I missed at the time.
When I make it into the 2000s, as I will the next few weeks with 2005, I start to think in terms of recent releases. But 19 years ago isn’t all that recent. My life was so different when I listened to these albums for the first time, yet it seems like hardly any time has passed.
Meet Me In Montauk 