Pancultural playground M.I.A., Houston, grime, and Gorillaz BY MATT ASHARE

The age of multiculturalism has come to an end in pop. In its place, 2005 brought a kind of postmodern anything-goes panculturalism, with London grime and chopped-and-screwed Houston entering the hip-hop sweepstakes, an androgynous, NYC-based, piano-playing singer-songwriter from England and his band — Antony and the Johnsons — taking home the Mercury Prize with the Amerindie I Am a Bird Now (Secretly Canadian), Britpop meeting hip-hop in the cartoon world of Gorillaz, Jack White’s blooze punk expanding to include marimba, and a diminutive Sri Lankan MC from London named M.I.A. dropping worldly raps that put a brand new spin on old school. Oh, and even if it is an old story, let’s not forget that the crazed mix of metallic riffing and politicized punk that fuels System of a Down is the product of four Armenian guys from LA.

Sure, there were some who stuck to the old formulas. Springsteen was still the Boss, the Stones dropped a new disc almost as an afterthought as they cranked up their trusty touring machine, Madonna went back to the disco, and as neo new wave kept the ’80s nostalgia factory in business, Beck was suddenly Beck again. Staying the course wasn’t always the best plan: in the wake of the electro-organic experiment of Postal Service, another strum-and-sung Death Cab for Cutie disc was underwhelming — especially when wily Conor Oberst was dabbling in neo new wave even as he delivered the most affecting Bright Eyes songs yet. So though the commercial power of Kanye and 50 ensured that pop’s financial center of gravity held, there were forces pulling from all directions, twisting and turning the familiar into the unexpected, remixing or simply mashing up cultural signifiers until it was impossible to tell who belonged to what or, more important, what really belonged to anybody. Here are 10 reasons why it was worth listening closely in 2005.

1 M.I.A. | ARULAR | XL/BEGGARS | The "M" is for Maya and the "A" is for Arulpragasam. As for the "I," well, it looks good, and it’s a subtle reminder that the electro-synth-bhangra-meets-Brooklyn- on-the-way-to-Jamaica grooves of Arular were all created by M.I.A. on a Roland MC-505. A civil war brought her to London, where this tough yet alluring MC claimed the city as she appropriated the Clash’s "London Calling." Somewhere, Joe Strummer was smiling.

2 FIONA APPLE | EXTRAORDINARY MACHINE | EPIC | Internet leaks helped mobilize a vocal fan base who demanded Extraordinary Machine, but all signs point to Apple’s making the decision to send the Jon Brion pop mixes to hip-hop producer Mike Elizondo for retooling. Maybe that’s what accords this powerful collection of songs its extra punch. Either way, it’s a defining disc that gave Apple the edge — not just the edginess — she’s always needed.

3 SYSTEM OF A DOWN | MEZMERIZE/HYPNOTIZE | AMERICAN/COLUMBIA | Hip-hop gave Rick Rubin a career, but when he applies that production æsthetic to hard rock, the results are explosive. Not that System of a Down needed help in that department. Both Mezmerize and its sister album Hypnotize are incendiary calls to arms with short fuses and long, winding, metallic riffs. There’s more Bad Brains than bad-ass here, as four Armenians raised in LA raise hell about everything from political hypocrisy to the size of their cocks.

4 SLEATER-KINNEY | THE WOODS | SUB POP | You could think of Sleater-Kinney as a female answer to System of a Down. But that doesn’t do either band justice. And though growth within the confines of a trio is never easy, guitarists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, with nothing more than Janet Weiss’s pounding drums for support, keep things going for 11 minutes in "Let’s Call It Love," an almost psychedelic guitar jam that never runs out of ideas, then come down to earth in "Entertain" to ask, "Where is the ‘fuck you’?," a question that certainly needed asking in 2005. The answer’s in the question: it’s called punk rock, not punk pop.

5 BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN | DEVILS AND DUST | COLUMBIA | Springsteen’s been around too long to ask "Where is the ‘fuck you’?" himself, but he can create the kind of characters who might. And when times are bad, he always seems to rise to the occasion with a disc like the mostly acoustic Devils and Dust, which matched the quiet desperation of 1982’s Nebraska in a way that 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad just couldn’t. The darkness that haunts Devils and Dust is almost tangible. And when he brought the songs to the stage, his sense of modesty and mortality — two elements as rare as platinum in rock and roll — only added poignancy to songs as outstanding in their own way as anything on The Woods, Mezmerize, or Hypnotize.

6 GORILLAZ | DEMON DAYS | VIRGIN | Behind the clever cartoon cover that adorns Demon Days is an album that very nearly defines the new panculturalism — and has a good time along the way. Blur’s Damon Albarn teams with mashmaster DJ Danger Mouse and a guest list that includes luminaries from both sides of the Atlantic (De La Soul, Happy Mondays, singer Shaun Ryder) for this rules-are-made-to-be-broken approach to mixing Britpop, hip-hop, and worldly grooves that’s somewhere between street-smart and smart-ass.

7 RUN THE ROAD | VICE | The Streets gave British hip-hop a genuine boost, but grime has put it on the map for good. Vice catches lightning in a bottle in a way that no single-artist grime disc (Dizzee Razcal’s, for one) can on the compilation Run the Road. It showcases Dizzee and the young Lady Sovereign in a context that highlights the visceral cultural clash of blunted dub, electro dancehall, and cockney-accented hip-hop that’s come to define this emerging pancultural genre.

8 PAUL WALL | THE PEOPLE’S CHAMP | SWISHAHOUSE/ATLANTIC | Britain had grime; Houston had chopped-and-screwed, a hip-hop style incubated in the city’s urban sprawl of Houston and as distinct as Dirty South crunk. Mike Jones had the bigger hit, and Young Jeezy came close. But it was a white boy, metal-mouthed Paul Wall, who best represented what scenes like Houston have become — melting pots where ethnic lines are as blurred as the unsettlingly syrupy beats on a typical Wall/Jones/Jeezy track. Get the "Limited Edition" two-disc version: its "chopped & screwed" bonus disc reveals the real Houston.

9 LCD SOUNDSYSTEM | DFA/CAPITOL | Give the Boston/Providence band Six Finger Satellite credit for being ahead of their time when they switched from guitar punk to synth-punk more than a decade ago. But the DFA production crew, who include LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy (and in the studio his DFA production partner, Tim Goldsworthy), picked up where ex-6FS main man Juan Maclean left off by turning retro synth electro back on itself with a heavy dose of subversive wit, out–Daft Punking Daft Punk with "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House."

10 SUFJAN STEVENS | ILLINOIS | ASTHMATIC KITTY | The Decemberists, Arcade Fire, Bright Eyes, Death Cab for Cutie . . . what happens when suddenly indie rock isn’t all that underground anymore and a hit teen drama, The OC, is central to spreading the indie gospel? It’s an upside-down world indeed. We’ll give Sufjan the indie nod this year, not because Illinois is part of some 50-state project that began with Greetings from Michigan, or because it’s got semi-mystical song titles like "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out To Get Us," but because somewhere in the eclectic sprawl of the album Sufjan actually does capture something about the title state, and because he’s got a sense of history — not just musical history.