Popular and/or acclaimed albums from the last, say, 5 years with STAYING POWER

Nada Surf is the real surprise. Like most, I had dismissed them as a novelty 90s band, but their new record is one of the catchiest records in years. Unbelievably good.

Yes, but for the kinds of people who read ILM - that is, Internet-centric folks who read about a lot more music than they actually listen to - five years can be a long time. As we know, everything is accelerated. The Arctic Monkeys backlash formed before they came up with a band name.

Are any of these albums actually very popular?

Again, it depends on the audience. "Illinois" isn't Mariah Carey popular, but among the subset we are or are aware of, it's huge in terms of awareness.

I am glad most of you understood what I meant with this thread. I think it's interesting.

I hope there are more kinds of people than that who read ILM. Unless we're not as allergic to hype as some of us pretend to be, anyway.

I am glad most of you understood what I meant with this thread.

I understood what you "meant" with it. But if what you suggest is true, your answers will be different in six months anyway.

Let the record show that using ILM while dosed up on Roxicet, post-tonsillectomy, is a Very Bad Idea.

others:
outkast, jay-z obviously. sleater-kinney, especially the woods. the shins. and sorry but i still enjoy "the moon and antarctica" every time i put it on...

im surprised my list is so "indie rock" or pitchfork or whatever heavy, but these really seem to be what will last (although i think the argument works the other way: does anyone still care about wolf parade?). tom breihan's post-jazz and pop podcast this year explained this well i think...

Screw you, you no-tonsil-having sonofabitch!

Kidding.

You are right, anyway. I just wanted to see a snapshot of what people still listen to now that was all the rage fairly recently, without the benefit of revivals or nostalgia.

I like the fact that ILM is fully archived for this reason. I can actually go back five years and see what petty things people were arguing about before I came along and made even more petty arguments ;-)

Not so much:
Hives - anything
White Stripes (anyone else think their latest is boring as cardboard?)
Wilco (excepting Kidsmoke and The Late Greats off their last one)
M.I.A. - Arular
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
DJ Danger Mouse - Grey Album

i just keep going back to this, more so than anything else from last year at least.

Modest Mouse, The Moon & Antarctica is cheating, since it's now almost six years old, but it really is fucking excellent, maybe not as much as Lonesome Crowded West, but it's way up there, and I'm always surprised at how little it feels played-out when I put it on. I keep halfway expecting it to feel dated or an artifact of a different era of indie rock, but it continues to stand for the same things it originally did to me - textured overemoting, kick-ass rock and roll, moody long drives with the car gradually getting uncomfortably hot and smelly from the sun, and general excellence of songwriting ("Stars Are Projectors" notwithstanding).

Brian Wilson, Smile. I never expected the remake/completion of Smile to so quickly and permanently become the definitive version in my mind, but it is, and it's a classic by any yardstick that I've got. Fantastic melodies and arrangements. Whimsical without feeling affected, truly joyful and moving music.

And, of course, still the best album of the 2000s that I've heard:

Andrew W.K., I GET WET. Jesus Christ, what a monster. I don't think I can even put this thing's staying power into clumsy overcooked high school record review words like I've been trying to do here. It's awesome and relentless.

This very fact is one of the reasons I find last.fm statistics so suspicious. Personally I think that particular stat is the result of last.fm actually Postal Service available to stream plus the algorithm they use to decide what people might like to listen to. For whatever reason it thinks almost everyone might like PS, and therefore their stats look really good.

So everyone doesn't?

I also still listen to Kid A, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's How I Long To Feel The Summer In My Heart and Blur's Think Tank pretty often.