Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 2005…
#7 – Time Well Wasted – Brad Paisley
This is the first album on my list that I didn’t hear in 2005. Brad Paisley, and country music in general, just weren’t on my radar that year.
It was four years later when I first heard Paisley’s American Saturday Night that I became an instant fan. And that sent me right to his back catalog to catch up with everything I’d missed.
Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 2005…
#8 – Fijacion Oral, Vol. 1 & Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 – Shakira
Today’s pick is a bit of a cheat, in that I’m squeezing two albums into one slot. But Shakira’s two-volume project, separated by five months, certainly feels like one extended album.
Fijacion Oral, the first (and better) volume, is performed entirely in Spanish, while Oral Fixation is fully English-language. The albums share a few titles but mostly tread different territory.
Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 2005…
#9 – Rebel, Sweetheart – The Wallflowers
I’m a massive fan of The Wallflowers’ 2000 album Breach, their third studio release and first after 1996’s breakthrough Bringing Down the Horse. But I had one foot out of the bandwagon after their uninspired follow-up, 2002’s Red Letter Days.
That made Rebel, Sweetheart a pivotal next entry in their discography. And fortunately, it was a return to form.
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.
I’ve noted that 1995 was a big year for debut albums, so I’m closing out this edition of Decades with another notable first album. This one is interesting because it didn’t become a hit until two years after its release.
Jewel wrote most of the songs on Pieces of You as a teenager, busking her away across the country in search of a music career. She eventually drew the interest of record labels while playing in coffeehouses and signed a deal to record an album. Released when she was 21, the record failed to make a splash.
