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42. El Camino - The Black Keys (2011)

Rock

Still riding the massive wave of success that Brothers brought them in 2010, The Black Keys managed to exceed all expectations on their follow-up El Camino just a year later. They built on the unlikely formula of blues for the masses, further honing the rebelliousness they’d embodied on previous efforts and finding the sweet spot between the emotionality of the blues and the meticulously manicured world of radio-ready rock. Tracks “Lonely Boy” and “Gold on the Ceiling” became monstrously huge hits, and for good cause. They were relentlessly catchy and found themselves at the front and center of the mainstream, seemingly for the precise reason that they sounded so far from it. “Little Black Submarines” is probably the band’s best song to date and it wasn’t even released as a single until almost a year after the album’s release.

It’s pretty remarkable what The Black Keys were able to do in the early 2010s. Through Brothers and El Camino, the band became one of the biggest on the planet, all while eschewing just about every pop stereotype of the times. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney flipped two definitive birds in the face of anyone suggesting that Rock was dead and they are in no small part responsible for the resurgence the genre’s enjoying even today.

*image; cover art for the album El Camino by The Black Keys