You might not guess it from the humble design, but this blog is but a small corner of a massive data accumulation and analysis system. A dedicated team of scientists, programmers, and physicists are hard at work using mountains of data to answer the most pressing question in music: what is the best year for music in the 21st century? After months of data cleaning and analysis, our team is pleased to announce our answer: 2004. This result is especially surprising because the team’s research was in no way influenced by the fact that this blog’s hyper-successful founder was a teen in 2004. Here’s a sampling of the releases from that year in no particular order:

• Modest Mouse – Good News for People Who Love Bad News
• Scissor Sisters – Scissor Sisters
• Kanye West – College Dropout
• Animal Collective – Sung Tongs
• The Killers – Hot Fuss (come fight me about this)
• Iron & Wine – Our Endless Numbered Days (I’ll fight about this too)
• Arcade Fire – Funeral
• Usher – Confessions
• Petey Pablo – Freek a Leek
• Ruben Studdard – Sorry 2004

I didn’t know about Electrelane until recently, but when I looked up when The Power Out was released I was not surprised to learn of yet another good album from 2004. The Power Out was the group’s second full length release, and was produced with help from producer Steve Albini. While their first album was primarily instrumental, The Power Out introduced vocals in three different languages, making use of a 16th century Spanish sonnet for the lyrics to Oh Sombra!. The group released two more albums, also on Too Pure, before going on permanent hiatus in 2007.