100 Best Albums of the Decade: 3

3: Beck - Sea Change (2002)

Beck was simply content to live life as the poster boy for cool "I don't give a shit" 90s white boy groove. I can't really say I blame him. The 90s seemed like a time where nothing could go wrong. Sure Clinton got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, but that was chump change compared to this decade's problems. Beck fit right in at home whipping out ready made tunes that perfectly fit the era.

But that was just a mask. The real Beck Hansen didn't come out to the world until 2002 when he released his most honest and heart wrenching album Sea Change - an album as desolate as the desert horizon, as broken as Beck's weary heart and as lost as all of us were in the months following 9/11. Beck played a chameleon as he morphed his own self made image into a wandering drifter looking for all the answers the rest of humanity is searching for.

Nigel Goodrich, famous for work with Radiohead, served as producer and helped Beck to grow up an become the rock star he always should have been. Gone are the drum machines, loops, fills and other tricks he had come so use to relying on. Lonesome acoustic guitars, subtle echoes from slide guitars and rustic piano all come together to paint a beautiful picture of a broken heart coming to terms with a love never to return.

Beck also finds his real voice. Not his goofy and monotonous rap, but a strong and radiating baritone that fills up all the cracks left by a minimalist approach. "The Golden Age" and "Guess I'm Doing Fine" are essentially there to show off his new found knack for crooning paired with an almost nonexistent backing track (save for the drums which are the only instrument that really sounds like the bitterness that Beck surely must have held for the woman who spurned him).

What has Beck done since then? Released two more albums back in his comfort zone. I don't know if I'm rating this album so high simply because it's unique, or just a fluke. Surely not both right? And surely not because it's a fluke either. Top Tunes:(Guess I'm Doing Fine, The Golden Age, Sunday Sun)