December 4th, 2009 
weldamfm 
Josh Schwartz, the dude who brought us boob tube guilty pleasures like The O.C., Gossip Girl and Chuck, took a break from writing angsty teen dialogue for mutants long enough to share his picks for the albums that defined the last decade with EW’s Music Mix blog. It’s hard to dispute that Schwartz has been incredibly influential in music and pop culture throughout the Noughties—credit him with introducing the world to Jason Schwartzman’s other gig (we’re still bummed), and for making Death Cab For Cutie famous enough that they could eventually move on to even more soundtrack work. Heck, we kinda love him, too, for booking power acts like No Doubt and Lady Gaga on Gossip Girl — a show that spawned two of its own potential music stars (even if it only promotes one of them), so we generally approve of what he has to say. A sampling of Schwartz’s self-titled categories after the jump:
Best Albums by the Defining Artists of the ’00s: Radiohead’s Kid A; Jay-Z’s The Blueprint
Best Albums That Saved Their Respective Genres: The Strokes’ This Is It; OutKast’s Stankonia
Best Albums That Changed Those Genres: Kanye West’s College Dropout; Arcade Fire’s Funeral
Best Albums That Capture What This Decade Felt Like: M.I.A.’s Kala; LCD Soundsystem’s Sounds of Silver
We’re noticing a pattern here on all these end-of-the-decade lists: OutKast’s Stankonia and Jay-Z’s The Blueprint held up especially well (even Jay-Z himself says so), as did Kanye’s College Dropout. Guess not everybody hates him as much as we think. (Especially not with six Grammy nominations… We just want to plant the seed now: Lil Mama should interrupt every one of his acceptance speeches, anywhere.)
One more nitpick: what, no love for X-tina on any of these lists? Stripped? Back to Basics? Hello, McFly, anyone remember these fantastic pop albums besides us (and fellow commenter James?)
Check out the rest of Schwartz’s picks at EW’s Music Mix.
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