Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot could have been one of the best albums of 2001, but execs at Reprise records didn’t back the record.
The band was given the option to buy back the recordings though eventually Reprise just turned them over for free. Wilco then streamed the album on their website in September 2001, before signing with Nonesuch records and officially releasing the album in April 2002.
My #4 album of 2002 is The Eminem Show — the third studio album by Eminem.
The Detroit rapper had the difficult task of following up on his smash success from 2000, The Marshall Mathers LP. That record stirred up a heap of controversy and sparked debates about free speech and artistic expression. It also received tremendous critical acclaim and sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.
How do you follow that? With arguably an even better album.
My fifth favorite album of 2002 is the last one on the list I didn’t hear the year it came out. I discovered Josh Rouse in 2005 after the release of his best album, Nashville, and as I am wont to do, immediately bought up everything else he’d ever recorded.
Under Cold Blue Stars is Rouse’s third album and his first fully realized work. It’s a loose concept album about a couple in the 50s, based in part on Rouse’s parents.
Coldplay’s sophomore album, A Rush of Blood to the Head, remains their most critically acclaimed and their most commercially successful. For a couple of years following the release of this album, it was actually cool to like Coldplay.
Then, due to their ridiculous success, the whole Gwyneth Paltrow and Apple thing, and who knows what else, it became very uncool to like Coldplay.
My seventh best album of 2002 is the 21st studio album by Elvis Costello. The famously prolific Costello has released nine more albums since, though his current three-year absence is uncharacteristic.
Costello has released few perfect albums over his four-decade career (three or four by my count) but every one of his releases is distinctive. Sometimes it’s a genre play (country, classical, adult contemporary), others a thematic one (the childhood nostalgia of Brutal Youth or the short story forming the spine of The Delivery Man).
Meet Me In Montauk 