Posts: Links / NPR's 50 Most Important Recordings of this decade.

One glaring omission I spotted right off the bat is Converge's "Jane Doe" which breathed new life into the hardcore/metalcore scene at the very start of the decade. They do mention Mastadon's Leviathan though, which is nice.

They also chose The Decemberists "The Crane Wife", which is a bit surprising considering the impact of previous recordings such as "Castaways & Cutouts" and "Picaresque".

This kind of thing would make a great topic on the soon-to-have-never-gotten-off-the-ground idiotechnica podcast. Let's get some more members posting and I'll make it happen!

i was listening to that show. it was great. he kept saying britney and the girl kept saying...no, i dont think thats right. he assured her she was a game changer. she never got behind it.

I would agree that britney was a game changer in the business side of the industry but not the music side. Britney opened the market to the preteen crowd. Before Britney they had successfully marketed boy bands to teenage girls and girl acts to teenage boys, but with Britney they were able to mass market pop music into a whole new realm of as yet unaccessable preteen hormones. It set the tone for the likes of aguilera, simpson, pink, avril lavigne etc. The actual music she was pumping out was the same old crap with new production techniques made possible by the boom of digital recording software that was coming out of Europe.

Before Britney they had successfully marketed boy bands to teenage girls and girl acts to teenage boys, but with Britney they were able to mass market pop music into a whole new realm of as yet unaccessable preteen hormones.

Couldn't you really argue then that bands like The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Madonna, etc. could also fit into that realm of mass marketing as described above. Plus I would also imagine that back in the days of American Bandstand music labels were able to target preteens and teens alike via Dick Clark. So maybe you could classify Brittany as reviving a phenomena that was temporary going through a dry spell rather then a novel phenomena in and of itself.

I don't think they had a crowd that young and large to market to before Britney came along. Granted I wasnt there for the beatles craze.

Not to knock your point, but the Britney Spears album they chose was actually the one that was more "adult" and targeted towards the Madonna market, isn't it?

I would have also liked to have seen Devotchka make this list, but I think whether or not they are seen as "game changers" or influential won't be seen for years.

After they had already hooked the teeny boppers.

Notice "Chinese Democracy" is absent..... I personally agree with the decision.