2004 : 18 "The Wrong Way" by TV on the Radio

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The Aughts turned out to be a pretty good decade for soul music, thanks in part to standard-bearers and retro-minded torch-carriers (Sharon Jones, Amy Winehouse, Jamie Lidell). But if you wanted to hear something that represented an approach to soul music that could be said to be "21st-century" in orientation, you could do a lot worse than to check out TV On The Radio, especially their first full-length studio album, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes. This album effectively takes an array of Black vocal stylings (given voice here by lead singer Tunde Adebimpe) and integrates it with the cluttered, loop-driven framework of post-Radiohead guitar rock. The fit isn't always clean, but having a few edges showing suits the band's millenial aesthetic, with its hints of neurosis and violence. Everything fits, even the parts that don't fit: what could be more twenty-first-century than that? —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: TV On The Radio >> "The Wrong Way"