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"  As 2009 draws to a close, we asked some of our favorite musicphiles to weigh in on what rocked their worlds the last ten years. Here&amp;#039;s what they loved (and loathed...).   ANDREW W.K. ROCKER/CLUB OWNER   Top three records from the past decade? 1. Andrew W.K.&amp;#039;s I Get Wet. The Universal Music Group loves it when I list my own albums.2. Shania Twain&amp;#039;s Up! It offers a truly unique sound and incredibly unusual listening experience\u2014a particular feeling only producer/song-writer Mutt Lange can deliver. And yes, I&amp;#039;ve been a fan of Shania Twain and Robert John &amp;quot;Mutt&amp;quot; Lange since I first heard &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re Still The One.&amp;quot;3. T-Pain&amp;#039;s Epiphany. This album solidified a new sound, attitude, and feeling not only in R&amp;amp;amp;B but popular music in general. T-Pain is a master musician and master entertainer.   Most underrated album of the decade? Here I Am by Ronald Isley and Burt Bacharach.  Biggest rock&amp;#039;n&amp;#039;roll badass of the decade?  Bryan &amp;quot;Baby Birdman&amp;quot; Williams.  Worst and best music trend to come out of the last decade?  Worst trend was passive pop. Best trend was Auto-Tune.   CARRIE BROWNSTEIN SLEATER-KINNEY MEMBER/NPR MUSIC BLOGGER   What are the top three records from the past decade? 1.  Wilco&amp;#039;s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Even though most of this album was written before it happened, YHF is an agonizing and beautiful album that summed up the ambiguity and hurt of a post-9/11 world. The record tells stories of misshapen hearts, lives, and intentions.2.  Second would be Outkast&amp;#039;s Speakerboxx/The Love Below. Probably one of the last albums\u2014as opposed to singles\u2014that was universally purchased. Imaginative, bizarre, and brilliant.3.  Joanna Newsom&amp;#039;s Ys. If we can&amp;#039;t celebrate boldness, oddity, daring, and uniqueness, then I don&amp;#039;t know what music is for. Newsom walks an artful line between allure and discomfort. A stunner.   Best band of the decade?  White Stripes. Freakish, dangerous, and loud. They vary their set list each night, they aren&amp;#039;t afraid of sonic messiness and impurities, and they make attempts to salvage the lost art of mystery.   Best guilty pleasure of the decade?  YouTube. It elevates artists and simultaneously renders them obsolete. It makes a 4-year old in her nightgown singing The Beatles as big of a sensation as Radiohead.   Worst and best music trend to come out of the past decade? Best: Home recordings, a resurgence and tolerance of lo-fidelity, micro-genres that garner macro-frenzies.Worst:  Bands turning into brands, commercials and brands becoming respected curators of music, preciousness, and the disappearance of mystery.   DANIEL TURESMANAGER AT AMOEBA RECORDS, HOLLYWOOD   Best album cover of the decade?  Fleet Foxes&amp;#039; Fleet Foxes  Top three records from the past decade?  Ariel Pink&amp;#039;s Worn Copy, Dungen&amp;#039;s Ta Det Lugnt, and Edan&amp;#039;s Beauty and the Beat.  Best guilty pleasure of the decade?  MGMT.  Most underrated album of the decade?  The Greenhornes&amp;#039; Dual Mono.   Most overplayed song of the decade?  Anything by Daft Punk.  Biggest rock&amp;#039;n&amp;#039;roll badass of the decade?  In terms of lifestyle and canceling shows, Amy Winehouse. Or, King Buzzo from the Melvins.  Best band of the decade?  Outkast. Even though they haven&amp;#039;t done anything good in eight years.   PJ BLOOMMUSIC SUPERVISOR FOR GLEE    Top three records from the past decade? 1.  Nick Cave &amp;amp;amp; The Bad Seeds&amp;#039; No More Shall We Part. Nick Cave is unquestionably one of the most prolific songwriters of the modern age. He is to the disenfranchised what Bob Dylan is to everyone else.2.  McLusky&amp;#039;s McLusky Do Dallas. A truly exhilarating rock experience that picks up right where the Pixies Surfer Rosa and Nirvana Bleach left off. McLusky leader Andrew Falkous captures a lyrical cleverness virtually lost in this &amp;quot;poor me&amp;quot; decade and combines it with unrelenting vocals, merciless guitar, and clever pop sensibilities to create a true indie masterpiece.3.  The Darkness&amp;#039; Permission To Land. It&amp;#039;s unfortunate most of the world dismissed The Darkness as a throwback, novelty metal act. If more folks took the time to listen, they would have discovered some of the most anthemic, well-crafted, sing-at-full-volume-in-your-car, arena-rock-driven pop songs to come forth in years.   Ultimate party-starter song of the decade?  Outkast&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Hey Ya&amp;quot;.  Most underrated album of the decade?  Emily Haines &amp;amp;amp; The Soft Skeleton&amp;#039;s Knives Don&amp;#039;t Have Your Back. Emily is better known as the leader of Metric or as a member of Toronto&amp;#039;s Broken Social Scene collective (which also gave birth to iPod-friendly chanteuse Feist). But unless you were already a fan, you probably missed Knives Don&amp;#039;t Have Your Back. The album features mostly piano-driven, introspective ballads amassed by Haines through years of unrecorded songwriting. She provides a heartbreaking window into her soul while expressing common moments of isolation we all encounter with pinpoint lyrical accuracy.  Best album cover?  Robbie Williams&amp;#039; Sing When You&amp;#039;re Winning. Robbie&amp;#039;s never been known for humility, but this soccer-themed album cover takes his bravado to new heights. The CD includes panel after panel of Robbie hanging out with Robbie. Robbie competing in a stadium with Robbie teammates, Robbie being raised to victory by other Robbies after the big win, naked Robbies in a spa bath toasting that win, drunk Robbies having a collective piss, defiant Robbies mooning the camera. It&amp;#039;s sheer audacity at its rock&amp;#039; n&amp;#039;roll best!  Best guilty pleasure of the decade?  Justin Timberlake&amp;#039;s Justified. Yeah, I wanted it to suck. Justin was simply too perfect and pure to be allowed additional success beyond &amp;#039;N Sync. And yet, the fact The Neptunes wrote and produced most of Justified didn&amp;#039;t help my cause. The fact that he had seminal artists like Timbaland and Janet Jackson join him as featured vocalists hurt even more. But the ultimate fact that sealed the deal? The album was simply really good! Damn you, Justin!  Biggest rock&amp;#039;n&amp;#039;roll badass of the decade?  Jack White. Anyone who can front three killer rock acts (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather), produce Loretta Lynn&amp;#039;s first album in four years, earning her a Best Country Album Grammy, and still isn&amp;#039;t afraid to throw a punch in a bar brawl (he gave Jason Stollsteimer from the Von Bondies a black eye in a Detroit night club) gets my vote!   GIRL TALK (a.k.a. GREGG GILLIS) MASH-UP GENIUS   Top three records from the past decade? 1.  Mariah Carey&amp;#039;s Emancipation of Mimi. This album dominated the summer of 2005 for me. I went out to dance clubs a lot that summer, and it was always a slow jam from this album closing out the night. It&amp;#039;s heavy, beginning to end.2.  Fennesz&amp;#039;s Endless Summer. This dropped when I was following many laptop experimentalists. It was so refreshing because it brought beautiful pop elements to that whole world.3.  Daft Punk&amp;#039;s Discovery. It&amp;#039;s a classic. What can you say? This is the only electronic music album that my mom loves.  Ultimate party-starter song of the decade?  Outkast&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Hey Ya!&amp;quot;  Best album cover of the decade? Lil Wayne&amp;#039;s The Carter III.   ROB MARKMAN MUSIC EDITOR AT XXL    Top three records from the past decade? 1.  50 Cent&amp;#039;s Get Rich or Die Tryin&amp;#039;. It was just like an energy that we&amp;#039;d never seen in hip-hop. Here came 50, this perceived bad guy, shot nine times, he&amp;#039;s friends with Dr. Dre and Eminem, and he comes out and sells a ton of records. From a hip-hop perspective, it put him on the same level playing field as Britney Spears. I remember going to the store to buy it as a fan, going to FYE in downtown Manhattan and the story wasn&amp;#039;t open\u2014we waited for it to open\u2014they didn&amp;#039;t have them. They said, UPS hasn&amp;#039;t come yet, come back at noon, after lunch. So I go back to work and I couldn&amp;#039;t get there until 3 PM. And I got there and the guy was like, &amp;quot;Yeah, we&amp;#039;re sold out.&amp;quot; I was scouring the city for a copy of Get Rich or Die Tryin&amp;#039;. As a hip-hop fan, not only did you have to have it, you had to be first one on your block with it. 2.  Eminem&amp;#039;s Marshall Mathers. We&amp;#039;ve had white rappers before in hip-hop: 3rd Bass, who got heavy hip hop respect. We&amp;#039;ve had the Beastie Boys, who of course got their respect. We&amp;#039;ve got Vanilla Ice, who sold a lot of records but didn&amp;#039;t get the respect, but when Em came through with his second album, I think that solidified his career. I know that sold 10 million copies. He was the poster boy for TRL. The spot usually there for Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears. So it just put hip-hop on a much higher level. And it broke down the color barrier because it was like, white or black didn&amp;#039;t matter. You had to give it up for Em because he had more skills than anybody. Arguably, one of the best MCs in the genre of all time. 3.  Usher&amp;#039;s Confessions. Just from an R&amp;amp;amp;B standpoint, he took a situation where he was in a relationship with Chili from TLC, and they had broken up and nobody knew exactly what the circumstances were. There were a whole lot of rumors. Chilli was speaking on it, Usher didn&amp;#039;t speak on it so much and said, &amp;quot;Hey, if you want to know what happened, buy my album.&amp;quot; He had great singles like &amp;quot;Yeah,&amp;quot; which was produced by Lil Jon and had Ludacris on it, which was a great party record, he had &amp;quot;Caught Up,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Throwback,&amp;quot; and he came back and did &amp;quot;My Boo&amp;quot; with Alicia Keys. You can listen to it from beginning to end, which is important.  Ultimate party-starter song of the decade?  50&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;In Da Club.&amp;quot; It just so infectious. When that beat comes on, and that little hook that he starts with, &amp;quot;Go Shorty, it&amp;#039;s your birthday.&amp;quot; Everybody can recite that from your four-year-old nephew to your 80-year-old grandma. I think the lyrics in between might get a little crude from here to there, but it just a record that you can complete identify with and throw it on at a party, in the club, at a barbeque, like it really just embodies what the title of the record is, &amp;quot;In Da Club.&amp;quot; You can throw that one anywhere, any part of the world and you&amp;#039;ll get a reaction. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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