#21: Let It Die

Feist: Let It Die
Especially in comparison to some of the albums on this list, Feist's Let It Die is the 2005 release you could comfortably listen to with your mother. It's beautiful, it's radio-friendly, it has a great BeeGees cover. It could conceivably be filed under "adult contemporary." You say all of that like it's a bad thing.

The drop-dead gorgeous Leslie Feist is an indie rocker at heart--she's now officially in Broken Social Scene (and sang "Almost Crimes," kids) among other projects. But every song here is so incredibly catchy that stuff like "Mushaboom" and the Ron Sexsmith cover "Secret Heart" should eventually land her on mainstream radio. Let's hope it's not "lite favorites," because a lot of this disc is make-out music of the highest order. She gives more soul to the BeeGees' "Inside and Out" than the brothers Gibb ever could, and somewhere in her croon of "Now I know what I don't want / I learned that with you..." on the title track, she seems to be pleading with the world to make her the pop star that she deserves to be.