This week, Billboard is publishing a series of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years ago. Our 2005 Week continues here with our list of the year’s best deep cuts — our staff’s favorite ’05 album tracks that were never released as official U.S. singles. (See our picks for the 100 best singles of the year here.)
While in today’s streaming age, a big album is lucky if it’s still making new impact mere months after its release, 20 years ago, albums could still spin off new smash hits for a year or longer if they had the goods. So while there were plenty of blockbuster albums that dominated the charts in 2005, a whole lot of them weren’t actually from 2005: Kelly Clarkson’s Breakaway, Ciara’s Goodies, Gwen Stefani’s Love.Angel.Music.Baby and Green Day’s American Idiot all notched multiple hits on that year-end Billboard Hot 100 (including at least one in the top 10) but all were technically late ’04 releases.
Still, there were plenty of big albums to be had in 2005 that actually dropped in 2005. Two years before they officially went head-to-head with their new releases, 50 Cent and Kanye West were already in an informal competition as the game’s two biggest rappers, notching the year’s two best first-week sales bows. Coldplay posted the year’s best opening numbers for a rock band with their X&Y LP, while System of a Down topped the chart with both their Mezmerize and Hypnotize albums. And amidst all the newly minted 21st century superstars, a pair of 20th century queens — Madonna and Mariah — also returned to their thrones, with rapturously received comeback sets following rare commercial missteps.
Our list of the best deep cuts from two decades ago culls the best non-singles from most of those aforementioned chart champions — as well as plenty of longtime favorites from the indie world, which was also booming at the time. See our staff’s picks for the 40 best album tracks of 2005 below.
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