Sorry no update yesterday. Lost and Top Chef. You know how it is.

10. The Weakerthans – Left and Leaving
Really, any Weakerthans album is going to be better than 95% of the stuff that comes out in any given year. Left and Leaving, though, was another one of those albums that came to me and changed my life. Maybe not in any earth shattering ways, but this is an album I can point to and say it opened my eyes to a whole new genre of music. The lyrics on here are most likely the best that I’ve ever heard in music, with the first half of the album being an absolutely perfect set of songs. The album slows in its second half, but overall this is a soul crushingly beautiful piece of music.

9. Green Day – Dookie
You’ll notice a theme for a lot of the albums on this list, and that theme is that it’s usually a band’s earlier work that gets them on here. For all the hoopla about American Idiot and how it was supposedly the best rock album ever released, it didn’t even come close to Dookie in terms of quality of music. In fact, few albums I’ve ever heard have been so enjoyable to listen to. Basket Case could be the first “punk” song I ever heard. Also, “Longview,” “She,” “Welcome to Paradise,” and really every song on here is awesome stuff.

8. The Offspring – Smash
Another early album that trumps all the stuff that came after it, Smash is one of the albums that stand out in my mind as influential in my musical tastes. The Offspring here were in just the right mindset, creating great punk rock tunes while still bringing out their silly side in appropriate doses (not like the doses that created the second half of Americana). I remember playing four square in sixth grade (oh, so innocent) singing “You stupid dumbshit goddamn motherfucker!” with my friends. It still kind of amazes me how parents can delude themselves into thinking they can protect their kids from things. But that’s another topic all together. This album is the goddamn motherfucking shit, though.

7. Weezer – S/T (Blue)
To anyone discerning music fan about my age, the question Blue Album or Pinkerton has to have been asked multiple times. I’ve floated back and forth between the two albums and I’m pretty set in that this one is a tiny bit better than Pinkerton (though both are approximately one googol times better than anything else Weezer has released). This album was nerd rock at its finest, with songs about Buddy Holly, the garage, surfing, dreaming, and other totally rocking subjects. Its unassuming nature is one of its greatest strengths, and really, there’s not a filler song or a down moment on this, Rivers Cuomo’s shining moment.

6. Foo Fighters – The Colour and the Shape
Dave Grohl seems like he’s subconsciously trying to get back to this album. He’s put out a double album with one side being hard rockin’ electric songs and the other being acoustic. He’s put out an album where he basically went around saying “We’re trying to mix electric and acoustic songs! We’re trying to change the world of music!” And, perhaps ironically, before any of this strange line of thought that no one has ever mixed loud and soft music before occurred, he put out The Colour and the Shape, which masterfully mixed loud and soft, electric and acoustic. And apparently he wasn’t even trying back then. “Everlong” is one of the best songs ever written. “Monkey Wrench” rocks harder than maybe any other Foos song ever. “February Stars” is beautiful. And every other song on here offers something, starting with the soft “Doll” and ending with the rocking anthem “New Way Home.” I’m kind of surprised that Dave Grohl seems to have missed the fact that he already put out his dream album, but I’m not surprised that he seems to subconsciously want to put it out again.