Rolling Stone's 50 Best Albums of 2008

Rolling Stone's 50 Best Albums of 2008

Original Source →

50.

May 8, 2008
Critic Score
80
21 reviews
L.A. may be the center of plastic glamour, but this noise-punk duo prove the city still has a dangerous side.

49.

February 5, 2008
Critic Score
78
32 reviews
'Wrestlers' epitomizes what makes this quintet the sharpest dance rockers this side of their pals LCD Soundsystem: catchy tunes, monster grooves, and lyrics resolving the heartfelt and the smartass.

48.

Raphael Saadiq - The Way I See It
September 16, 2008
Critic Score
76
16 reviews
With a supple tenor that glides up easily into Smokey Robinson territory, the former Tony! Toni! Toné! frontman has crafted a filler-free album that evokes classic Northern soul without sounding slavish.

47.

October 21, 2008
Critic Score
72
28 reviews

A soulful romp through psychedelic melodies and sprawling noise-scapes, Skeletal is also a whimsical, Girl Talk-style pastiche, with 15 tracks that consist of a multitude of song fragments.

44.

March 25, 2008
Critic Score
70
24 reviews

Overall, Consolers feels less like a project and more like a jam session. But it's fun to watch White make things up as he goes along.

42.

August 18, 2008
Critic Score
74
20 reviews

With their new album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, the pair rejoin the rock conversation as if they'd never left.

41.

October 20, 2008
Critic Score
65
20 reviews

Johnson yelps at one point — making it clear that his band still finds resonance in words that were clichéd by 1956. And for that, you’ve got to salute them.

40.

Jonas Brothers - A Little Bit Longer
August 12, 2008
Critic Score
64
7 reviews
The boys' fantastic third album is steeped in the fuzzed-up guitars, three-part harmonies, and cotton-candy choruses of Big Star and Cheap Trick. Power-pop die-hards awaiting the genre's commercial saviors must reckon with the fact that the messiahs have arrived.

39.

Taylor Swift - Fearless
November 11, 2008
Critic Score
67
13 reviews
Swift is a songwriting savant with an intuitive gift for verse-chorus-bridge architecture.

38.

Ra Ra Riot - The Rhumb Line
August 19, 2008
Critic Score
75
13 reviews

37.

Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV
March 2, 2008
Critic Score
70
8 reviews
Instrumental sets by bands are usually just footnotes, but this collection of dense headphone music feels like a creative breakthrough for Trent Reznor.

36.

July 14, 2008
Critic Score
82
27 reviews
The music is more rousing than ever; the power chords and hair-metal wanks spiked with singalong chants and new instrumental flavors.

35.

April 8, 2008
Critic Score
84
32 reviews

It's not every goth-punk fiend who can celebrate his fiftieth birthday with an album as loud, filthy and brilliant as Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

33.

Ne-Yo - Year of the Gentleman
September 16, 2008
Critic Score
75
9 reviews

32.

Jamey Johnson - That Lonesome Song
August 5, 2008
Critic Score
80
5 reviews

31.

October 2, 2007
Critic Score
75
23 reviews
Lips producer Dave Fridmann helmed MGMT's debut disc, fluffing their glitchy daydream rock into an intergalactic odyssey.

30.

March 3, 2008
Critic Score
72
23 reviews
Rather than crooning about being committed, she sounds like she's being released.

29.

July 8, 2007
Critic Score
85
23 reviews

For Emma, Forever Ago never turns into a pity party, because Vernon has a light touch, with zero interest in narrative or confessional lyrics.

28.

The Knux - Remind Me in Three Days...
October 14, 2008
Critic Score
67
6 reviews

27.

Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun
August 19, 2008
Critic Score
66
22 reviews

That Lucky Old Sun lacks the magnificent shock of SMiLE, Wilson's 2004 completion of that '67 album. But it has a natural, hopeful flow that leaves you warm all over.

26.

Mudcrutch - Mudcrutch
April 29, 2008
Critic Score
78
9 reviews
The songs are mythic Americana: With help from his bandmates, Petty creates a vivid cast of road dogs, strippers and junkies that conjures Gram Parsons' Bible-haunted Southerners and Robert Hunter's cosmic Westerners.

24.

November 11, 2008
Critic Score
73
17 reviews
Rarely is postmodern art such bloody good fun.

23.

August 5, 2008
Critic Score
73
30 reviews
Largely, this is the introspective folk rock of Bright Eyes, though there's some welcome shift away from autobiography.

22.

Jackson Browne - Time the Conqueror
September 23, 2008
Critic Score
60
4 reviews

21.

October 28, 2008
Critic Score
68
25 reviews

Off With Their Heads is great British pop in the dynamic lethal-irony tradition of the mid-Sixties Kinks, the early Jam and, with that vintage-New Wave tone of Nick Baines' keyboards, XTC's 1979 album, Drums and Wires.

20.

September 23, 2008
Critic Score
65
26 reviews

Only by the Night is long on astral, arena-ready largeness, with blippy keyboards, droney guitars and whoa-oh-oh backing vocals.

19.

February 26, 2008
Critic Score
84
17 reviews

Some of the music is gripping — the modal-sounding chorus and blippy groove of “My People” suggests an R&B version of Radiohead — but other tunes feel like absent-minded doodles, and Badu’s social consciousness nets middling returns.

18.

October 14, 2008
Critic Score
69
17 reviews

While it shows that the 55-year-old barbed-wire country singer is wary of rock's trappings, Little Honey proves she's still crushed out on the music.

17.

B.B. King - One Kind Favor
August 26, 2008
Critic Score
86
4 reviews

16.

August 5, 2008
Critic Score
83
17 reviews

His return to political-minded material on Harps and Angels is reason to wrap yourself in the flag and cheer.

15.

April 1, 2008
Critic Score
74
23 reviews
Burton was drafted to produce the next album by the group from Akron, Ohio, and the result is the Keys' most multicolored set.

14.

October 28, 2008
Critic Score
71
13 reviews

13.

September 23, 2008
Critic Score
77
15 reviews

12.

November 23, 2008
Critic Score
59
32 reviews
The first Guns n' Roses album of new, original songs since the first Bush administration is a great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record.

11.

June 3, 2008
Critic Score
87
28 reviews
A lower-dosage Animal Collective, the Foxes stuff their free-form songs with rich, swirling melodies; billowing clouds of organs, tom-toms, bells and assorted stringed instruments cloak group vocals whose secular-gospel, suede-fringed precision owes plenty to Crosby, Stills and Nash.

10.

January 29, 2008
Critic Score
82
27 reviews

On their debut, Vampire Weekend mostly earn points the old-fashioned way: by writing likable songs you'll be glad to revisit next month.

9.

September 12, 2008
Critic Score
77
25 reviews
The musicianship feels thrillingly live throughout, and nimble new bassist Robert Trujillo helps, even though he's mostly heard as a distant, ominous rumble.

8.

July 8, 2008
Critic Score
72
28 reviews
Taken as a whole, the album's first five songs stand among Beck's strongest work.

7.

June 17, 2008
Critic Score
73
33 reviews

Coldplay's desire to unite fans around the world with an entertainment they can all relate to is the band's strength, and a worthy goal. But on Viva la Vida, a record that wants to make strong statements, it's also a weakness.

6.

April 29, 2008
Critic Score
74
22 reviews

Santogold ultimately sounds like her own damn movement.

5.

April 15, 2008
Critic Score
73
12 reviews

Mellencamp teamed up with producer T Bone Burnett to create a whole new sound — a set of textured, atmospheric folk and country blues that adds up to one of the most compelling albums of Mellencamp’s career.

4.

June 10, 2008
Critic Score
71
27 reviews

Evil Urges explodes the band’s sound with the same kind of creative leap that Wilco took on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Radiohead took on Kid A.

3.

June 10, 2008
Critic Score
80
19 reviews
OK, it’s true: he really is the best rapper alive.

1.

September 22, 2008
Critic Score
86
32 reviews
Dear Science is a brilliant balancing act between pop aspiration and music-geek aesthetics.
Original Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20081214030201/http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/24958695/albums_of_the_yea
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