INTERVIEWS125 Best Albums of the Past 25 Years

It's hard not to listen to the late Elliott Smith without nostalgia: the mopey singer-songwriter did commit suicide by sword, after all. A January 1999 profile in SPIN captured the indie icon in all his shabby, shambolic glory, dressed in thrift store duds and admitting that, "The last thing I need right now is somebody telling me how fame can make you crazy." XO followed Elliott's unexpected post-Good Will Hunting celebrity. The success certainly didn't make him upbeat, though the piano bounce of "Baby Britain" gets close, even as its lyrics describe "floating over a sea of vodka."

"Among the most inventive dance albums of the decade," SPIN surmised in 1999. "What we admire in deep house and American garage is the music's untouchable sexiness, which U.K. house has always lacked. At the same time, we like to rough up that polished sound with some English punk attitude," Jaxx member Simon Ratcliffe told the magazine. "What's great about [Basement Jaxx] is the way they go from cartoon disco to sick drug-noise," the magazine added in 2001, "from imagining Prince as Chicago house auteur to perfecting Brazil-as-utopia samba-house."

Jeff Buckley came close to transcending his status as the son of British folk legend Tim Buckley during his short musical life. And most of that owes to his lone studio full-length, Grace. "If Buckley continues to evolve in the direction that Grace indicates, only good things can result," read the SPIN review, which was taken with Buckley's distinctive vocal quaver and sense of song. Sadly, that evolution was cut short when Buckley died, at 30. Still, as the magazine put it in 2004: "Thom Yorke owes him, Chris Martin owes him, Devendra Banhart owes him big time."

The dirty spirit of rock'n'roll got dug up by this Detroit duo, who pretended to be brother and sister. "The thing was it wasn't hype," legendary British DJ John Peel told SPIN in 2003. "I think people were just relieved at the simplicity and directness of the White Stripes." That meant garage riffs and thumping, primal drums. "We wanted things to be as childish as possible, but with no sense of humor," Jack White told the magazine in 2002. "Because that's how children think."

This Williamsburg, Brooklyn, band blew up the hard way: with a lot of hustle, heart, and sick two-part harmonies. In an eye-opening 2007 SPIN article, the band lays out their creative chronology. Lead singer Tunde Adebimpe listened to the Beatles and Beach Boys in Nigeria; guitarist and producer Dave Sitek recorded and tour-managed Yeah Yeah Yeahs; drummer Gerard Butler was a subway busker. It's no wonder that these disparate histories smashed together in such a unique way on the band's album, which "proves 'soulfulness' and 'art rock' aren't antithetical."