These records will turn 20 in 2025

In Italy Povia depopulated.

It was Paolo Bonolis who gave the Milanese singer-songwriter fame when in 2005 he had him perform as an out-of-competition guest at the Sanremo Festival with “I bambini fare ‘ooh.'”: the hit was the real hit of that year, so much so that it conquered at the end of 2005 it reached the top of the ranking of the best-selling singles in Italy during that recording season, winning 7 platinum records. For the record: the second best-selling Italian song of that year was “Kleptomania” by Sugarfree, who disappeared from the radar after that year. In the United States, however, Mariah Carey triumphed with “We belong together”: at the peak of her career, the voice of “All I want for Christmas is you”, destined to become the queen of Christmas within a few years, beat Gwen Stefani and her “Hollaback girl” and reached the top of Billboard’s chart of the most successful singles of the year. But what remains of 2005, fortunately, goes beyond the charts. All in all, 2005 was a special year, for rock and beyond, marked by a handful of records that left a deeper mark than was (not) thought at the time. And as they prepare to celebrate their twentieth anniversary, they are now perceived as cult albums, for different reasons.

Coldplay – “X&Y”

Three years after “A rush of blood to the head”, the British band led by Chris Martin in June 2005, at the gates of summer, returned to the scene with a new album of unreleased songs, this one “X&Y”.

The single “Speed ​​of sound” anticipated it, but the real hit of Coldplay’s third work would only be taken from the album after the summer: it was “Fix you”, a touching dedication to Martin’s wife, Gwyneth Paltrow, written after the death of her father. “X&Y” wasn’t exactly a very memorable album, by Coldplay’s own admission: “Several songs we had written for ‘X&Y’ didn’t make it onto the album and, looking back, they should have been included. When the time came to deciding what would end up on the record and what wouldn’t, we were now almost out of time. It means, unfortunately, that ‘X&Y’ wasn’t up to what it could have been.” However, it was the album that represented the transition between the band’s beginnings and the “Viva la vida or death and all his friends” phenomenon.

Gorillaz – “Demon days”

And Danger Mouse made the sound of Gorillaz take off, making somehow iconic that mix of hip hop, alternative rock and trip hop that four years earlier had characterized the debut – eponymous – of former Blur Damon Albarn and co. “It was sink or swim. At the end of the day, the people you worked with – whether it was the choir or whether it was the guitarist – were specialists in what they do. What you had to do was discover the best side of their job and then making it adaptable to the context of the entire project. Which goes back to putting together a song on a computer-based program”, the producer would recall about the “Demon days” sessions. The album, which came out in May, sold more than 8 million copies worldwide, driven by hits such as “Feel good inc.”

Bruce Springsteen – “Devils & Dust”

In the beginning it was “Nebraska”. Then in 1995 “The ghost of Tom Joad” arrived. In 2005, however, the Boss sent “Devils & dust” to stores: it was the third acoustic album of his career. Springsteen revealed that many of the songs included in “Devils & Dust” actually dated back a decade before the album’s release: “All the way home” was supposed to be part of the 1991 album “Better days”, “Long time comin’ ” and “The hitter” he had written and performed in the 1996 solo tour linked to “The ghost of Tom Joad”, while he had played the title track in the rehearsals of “The rising tour” in 2003. The album was released in full controversy with the presidency of Republican George W. Bush. Springsteen publicly sided against the federal administration: although he believed the military reaction that led to the invasion of Afghanistan was inevitable, he firmly disapproved of the conflict against Iraq that began in 2003. At the 2006 Grammy Awards, where he won the statuette with “Devils & dust” as “Best male solo performance”, after singing the song that gave the album its title he let out a “brig ’em home”, “bring them back to home”, leaving the stage before receiving the standing ovation.

Madonna – “Confessions on a dance floor”

As we wrote here, “Confessions on a dance floor” represented Madonna’s last appearance in 2005.

The album of “Hung up” and “Sorry” was the last, great Madonna that the pop universe knew and recognized as such: it is common opinion that after that album Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone was no longer able to produce anything particularly significant. It is no coincidence that when in recent days the Queen of Pop announced that she had returned to work on an album together with Stuart Price, the same producer of “Confessions on a dance floor”, the hope of being able to finally hearing something meaningful from the Material Girl again. “Confessions on a dancefloor”, Madonna’s “disco” album, was modeled on the examples of the productions of Giorgio Moroder, Marc Cerrone, Chic, the Bee Gees and Abba themselves, but reworked to adapt them to current times: the disco it was conceived as a DJ set, without interruptions between one piece and another. There was also a political meaning behind it: “It wasn’t just a reaction to what I was doing at work, but also to what was happening in the world. I just wanted some relief.” After 9/11 many governments had banned legal raves fearing that they could become a target for terrorist actions: “.With this record I wanted to raise morale for myself and others.”

Kanye West – “Late registration”

There was a Kanye West before the Kanye West we all know today, the one who sadly gets talked about more for extra-musical events than anything else. The one from “Late registration” revealed himself to the whole world as a genius destined to change the music of the 2000s in one way or another, with his visions and his flashes. The consecration will only come in 2007, two years later, with “Graduation”: but in “Late registration” there are already the seeds of West’s revolution. The album, which included singles such as “Diamonds from Sierra Leone”, “Gold digger”, “Heard ’em say”, “Touch the sky” and “Drive slow” won a Grammy for “Best Rap Album” in 2006.