All Music Loves 2005

A reader asked in the comments section of AllMusic Loves 2004, our previous feature listing our editors' favorite releases from a given year, "What next? AllMusic Loves 2005!?!?" Yes, exactly. As we said when we looked back at 2000, we are covering each year of the decade until we reach the end. Having passed the midpoint, we grapple with a year highlighted album-wise by the apex of record-collector rock (LCD Soundsystem's LCD Soundsystem), thrilling tongue-in-cheek meta-punk (Art Brut's Bang Bang Rock & Roll), and politicized electro-rooted trunk rattlers (M.I.A.'s Arular). Just as significantly, 2005 featured one of the decade's oddest smashes in Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" and, in Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone," a good old-fashioned anthem. In the case of the latter, guilt lies only in the souls of those who think of it as a mere guilty pleasure.