Basically I came up with this one because I couldn’t think of 5 albums that I do listen to after 10 years has passed. Oh sure I can think of a lot of albums that I LOVE that were made prior to 1999, but the specific criteria are albums I listened to at least fairly regularly in 1999 or earlier, which is basically when I still didn’t know very much about music.

1. Green Day - Dookie

This was really the first major album in my life, and it was the first CD I bought on my own. It was my favorite CD in high school and I practically wore it out. However I ended up selling my copy at a time in my life when I was trying to clean my music collection of any albums that could possibly be a negative influence. Since that time I somehow never ended up purchasing another copy, and I generally lost interest in Green Day after that point. Their acoustic song “Fork in the Road” (or whatever that turd is called) was unfortunately the song my high school class picked for us to graduate to. The only other Green Day albums I ever bought were Warning, which I was pretty disappointed by, and the live CD/DVD “Bullet in a Bible.”

2. No Doubt - Tragic Kingdom

Let me tell you the story of No Doubt. Here is a band that is honestly not very good, plays a terrible mostly underground genre of music called ska, and struggles along in Orange County for years (they formed in 1986). Amazingly enough, they do have an incredibly attractive, tall, skinny blonde named Gwen Stefani in the band who eventually becomes their singer. On the strength of their look alone (because honestly they suck!), they actually get signed. They then release an absolutely terrible self-titled album in 1992 and almost get dropped from their label.

Along comes Matthew Wilder. Do you know who he is? He is a producer who in the ’80s, had the hit song “Break My Stride.” Together with the label, he sees the star potential for Gwen Stefani but has to admit that the band is terrible. The label sits the band down and tells them that ska is getting big right now and they could go big too, but they are going to have to work with the label a little bit and they found someone who can help them take their sound mainstream. They bring in Matthew Wilder and say trust the good producer man here and everything will go well.

So Wilder works with them on “Tragic Kingdom,” and boom, the rest is history. This album went 10x platinum and today, dozens of people are under the impression that No Doubt writes good songs, when in reality, it is probably Wilder’s arrangements and ideas that breathed life into what would otherwise be terrible songs.

Do you know who else Matthew Wilder went on to do the same thing for? Christina Aguilera, Miley Cyrus, Natalie Imbruglia, and Kelly Clarkson. He is a pro at writing songs for untalented good-looking women who the record labels then exploit for money.

It’s sad. You might even say it’s “tragic.”

3. Blur - Parklife

Even when I did listen to this album it was hard to reconcile its unique Britishness with my American life. Blur definitely was the quintessential Britpop of the time, and I don’t think any band, even Oasis could be considered more British. The result was that usually it was a little too wacky and light to be taken as serious music. Not that I particularly cared. But beyond that, I remember that even at the time I would sometimes skip tracks, and I often had the habit of making mix tapes with only particular tracks on them. Now I am sure that the album as a whole does not speak to me. In some respects this album meanders all over the place. However, I think a couple of the tracks could maybe find a home on my iPod today, tracks like “Girls and Boys,” “London Loves,” and “Tracy Jacks.” Those are still pretty good songs if you think about it. Unfortunately, though, I never found a way to like any of Damon Albarn’s other stuff, including later Blur albums or Gorillaz.

4. Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness

This double album is one that I had mixed feelings about even then. Everyone seemed to love it, but I personally just kind of liked it. I can’t even remember if I listened to both discs on this album. I think that Billy Corgan suffered from too huge of an ego to realize the bloated monster he was releasing on the world. Actually now that I think about it, the fact that he can’t sing yet he has the audacity to front a band like the Pumpkins is surely sign of a bloated ego. Anyway, the single, “1979,” is great, but beyond that it was more just good music to put on while studying, which is something I don’t really do any more, obviously, since I’m grown up and have a job now. And to be honest, off the top of my head, I can’t remember any of the other titles of any of the other songs on either of these discs, even though one of them is the title track.

5. Nada Surf - High/Low

I used to spin this disc a lot in high school and now almost never do. I’m not even sure to be honest that I still have a copy anywhere, although I do remember seeing it in the last year. (I have moved twice since then, though.) Needless to say, even if my copy is still around, I am not really compelled to put this one in. It has a couple good tunes, but does not really have lasting replay value. I did hold out hope for a couple of years that Nada Surf would return to this loud/soft dynamic, and rev it up a little bit more than they have done on later releases, but at the very least I can say that I definitely respect all three of them as musicians and songwriters. Nada Surf is probably the only band that still has any credibility on this entire list. That is something to applaud them for, as they have made a career out of music without sucking the teat of the major record labels¹ and complaining about how iTunes and music downloading has ruined their career. At least as far as I know.

¹ Read the Wikipedia article about how Nada Surf gave Elektra the finger!