Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#2 The Strokes, IS THIS IT

Listen on Spotify or YouTube

vs.

#15 Aaliyah, AALIYAH

Listen on Spotify or YouTube

To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [[email protected]] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

We have one Designated Cheerleader today, it’s for IS THIS IT, and it’s from @renamj.bksy.social. Take it away, Rena!

Full disclosure: I did not nominate The Strokes' debut album Is This It for the 2001 album tournament, nor did I give it a seed vote. It doesn't need my help, and I wanted to champion lesser-known albums that could really use the boost. But it was my favorite album when I was an actual teenager in 2001.

2001 was a pivotal year for me: I became a high school senior (Class of 2002!); I was literally in my AP U.S. History class when 9/11 happened (lol); I turned 17 in October; I was accepted to my first choice college (they had rolling admissions so I could apply early); and in December I finally got my driver's license on my third try. I was ready for the next chapter of my life as a young adult, even though I had no idea what to expect. I knew I would have a better life..."someday."

I was getting more into music around this time, reading album reviews and watching MTV2 after school. Early on in high school I went through a "pretending to be normie" phase where I tried to be like everyone else - wearing trendy mall clothes and listening to Top 40 (nothing wrong with pop per se, but most of my peers were mainstreamers who didn't have a deeper appreciation of music). To put it bluntly, it wasn't me. I didn't really know who I was yet, and school is a terribly confining environment. It goes without saying that music is an enormous part of my life, and this was only the beginning.

For the record, I did go through an "indie" phase in my late teens/early twenties. Then I discovered SoulSeek and a much broader scope of music. One great thing about music communities like this one is discovering just how much music is out there, beyond what gets written about in Rolling Stone or Pitchfork (I was never a fan, I found them off-putting even then) or other major music sites. As I always say, look beyond the canon.

The Strokes had a deafening amount of hype around them, and even then they had very vocal haters on message boards. "The Strokes are jokes" and all that. Is This It is the Anora of the indie revival scene (personally, I liked Sean Baker's Oscar-winning film but did not love it.). Anyway, I bought the CD, maybe at the local CD World, and I played it over and over (favorite tracks: "The Modern Age," "Soma," "Barely Legal"). I couldn't really relate to the lyrics per se - I was awkward and inexperienced and more focused on my grades anyway. I just thought the songs were catchy.

In retrospect they were sort of a "gateway" band for me. There are folks who got into The Velvet Underground, The Cars, The Modern Lovers, and Television through them and I think that's great! Listening to these songs now, they're not exactly earth shattering but they're still fun. I actually think their second album, Room on Fire, is even better.

Is this the best album of 2001? No! Not in my humble opinion, anyway. As a work of art, I think Björk's Vespertine is far more interesting, to name one example. But it meant something to me at one point in my life and that does matter.

Thank you, Rena!

Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.

Yesterday, #5 Björk, VESPERTINE defeated #12 Fugazi, THE ARGUMENT, 144-113-2.

Thanks,

Kent