SONIA'S SUGGESTIONS 2003

I just wanted to say it is unacceptable that people are choosing more than ten albums. You should try to be more discerning. I promise you the world won’t end if people don’t know that you liked that 11th album too.

Going back in time now. It is the year 2003. I am 13 years old, living in Mississauga. I get my music from Limewire. Ha ha computer AIDS funny. I am unaware of how much worse and how much better things will get. Such is the feeling of nostalgia, giving me a great opportunity to SPOUT MY BULLSHITTTT below.

10. The Dropkick Murphy's - Blackout

Every St. Patrick's Day, every white kid in North America plays Shipping Up to Boston on loop until they pass out at an unrespectable time. This album does not have that song, so it’s okay for me to put it on here. Listening to this reminds me that my music taste was initially shaped to a non-insignificant degree by Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and I don't know how to feel about that.

Songs: Black Velvet Band, Dirty Glass

9. Moneen - Are We Really Happy?

Like Brand New, Moneen was a pioneer in the act of creating Very Long Song Names. I remember being in a record store (remember those???), reading the back of their CDs and thinking “ha, is this a song name… or the beginning of a SENTENCE?” To be honest I didn’t relisten to this album because I think the uneasy feelings of nostalgia will honestly kill me.

Songs: Going solely based off memory- Start Angry… End Mad, Life’s Too Short Little Ndugu

8. Yeah Yeah Yeah's - Fever To Tell

This kind of “indie rock” music, by virtue of being in every commercial and Muzak-playing establishment, now haunts my dreams (in a bad way). But in 2003, this was groundbreaking shit. While I cannot abide by Maps, for it is on par with “Where Is My Mind” in terms of having been run into the ground by dorks, the rest of the songs are good enough to outweigh that.

Songs: Date With the Night, Pin

7. M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts

There’s bad blippity blop music and there’s good blippity blop music. This, my friends, is good blippity blop music.

Songs: Run Into Flowers, Cyborg

6. Missy Elliott - This is Not A Test

Nostalgia is a bittersweet feeling, and progress is just as double-sided. Listening to this album today, I can’t help but be reminded of the pieces of culture that were saner. Missy Elliott was a highly respected gender nonconforming woman in a time before gender nonconformity became basically just a pathetically easy consumer marketing demographic. Her feminist lyrics could still be construed as defiant at the time, while today any rebelliousness attributed to feminism is wholely manufactured. Elliott’s Toyz has 1000 times more wit and humor than something like WAP, which might be because it wasn’t written in the later stages of a neoliberal hellscape. One step forward, two steps back? I’ll end on a positive note: Elliott carries the honor of being both the first female rapper inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, and the only one that Azealia Banks hasn’t started a hilarious feud with.

Songs: Pass That Dutch, Let It Bump

5. Brand New - Deja Entendu

A nice memory I have regarding this album, is that I remember playing Sic Transit Gloria for my dad, who conveyed to me in a very polish way basically that it was "very gay,” and that I should be listening to real music like Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam. Since then, I learned that Jesse Lacey got MeToo’d, which got me thinking, what male public persona hasn’t been at this point? MeToo accusations are just a constant in the background of our culture now, as politics continues to be replaced by making a show of bearing witness to suffering. While I don’t wish to return to a time when concerns about sexual assault were entirely dismissed, I do miss when people didn’t act like I was obligated to adjudicate the individual moral character of people I do not fucking know!

Songs: Jaws Theme Swimming, Play Crack the Sky

4. Outkast - Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

You have to understand What Andre 3000 did with Hey Ya. He created the only song with that much commercial success that can continue to be played without making a person with reasonably good taste want to kill themself. For this album, Outkast did for music what Grindhouse did in movie theatres. Remember movie theatres?? I preferred Planet Terror back then, but upon rewatch I came to favour Death Proof, and I was a The Love Below girl before, but upon relistening this month I’m now enjoying Speakerboxxx more. I guess that’s what you could call an evolution of taste, which judging from the other lists, is a concept some of you are unfamiliar with.

Songs: Speakerboxxx: Unhappy, Bowtie; The Love Below: Roses, Pink & Blue

3. Pretty Girls Make Graves - The New Romance

This album doesn’t sound like every other album in the world, which is my first criteria for music that I bother to listen to. Maybe the least riot-grrl sounding band of the riot grrl realm, which might explain why I listened to them the least back then but like them a bit more now.

Songs: All Medicated Geniuses, The New Romance

2. Jarcrew - Defacto Sympathy B

I just discovered this album like a month ago when I was looking for a different artist. These guys were doing post-punk before I knew punk had been posted. They were ahead of their time, which reminds me of me and almost all of my opinions. Like many respectable artists, they made like one or two albums and then disbanded.

Songs: Defacto Symphony, Capobaby

1. Bombs Over Providence - Liberty’s Ugly Best Friend

This album has a magical ability to make me feel like I’m listening to it for the first time, every time I happen upon it again every handful of years. It has a special place in my heart because it coincided with my dumb preteen political awakening, a feeling that has since been crushed by an awareness that nothing substantive is possible. The contemporary culture increasingly reflects this with political art that has all the subtlety and edge of Get Him to the Greek’s Aldous Snow’s “African Child.” Contrast with Bombs Over Providence, who were political without being cringey, and smart without reaching Thesaurus Punk levels of bands like Bad Religion. And all the way through this album manages to not be a bummer!

Songs: Walkerton, Workfare, and the Wusses Who Watched; May Cruise Missile Diplomacy Keep Us Truthful, Good, and Mild!