2005 feels like a lifetime ago. The belts were chunkier, the jeans were skinnier, and silicone bracelets were worn on wrists. In the alternative music realm, dozens of albums defined the year as pop punk continued to ride its mainstream explosion. Jack’s Mannequin bottled a return to Orange County, a breakup, and a leukemia diagnosis into Everything In Transit. The All-American Rejects tasted a commercial boom with Move Along. Gym Class Heroes combined hip-hop with emo throughout The Papercut Chronicles, using its hybrid sound to foreground themes of addiction, poverty, and heartache. Needless to say, it was a banner year. Having polled our readers on the best 2000s pop-punk songs last week, we decided to stay on topic and ask them about the best 2005 albums. Find the top fan picks ranked below.
Read more: 15 of Fall Out Boy’s heaviest songs of all time, ranked
5. Silverstein – Discovering the Waterfront
Frontman Shane Told was once in his first band Jerk Circus, Silverstein, and radio-rock group the Livid simultaneously. It’s lucky for us that he made Silverstein his full-time project, especially considering the scale of their second album. Taking influence from The Lovely Bones, Discovering the Waterfront is beloved by our readers, employing tasteful screams alongside melodic and heavy moments. Catching up with AP in 2016, Told explained a few things that we didn’t know about the album, including recording next door to Bon Jovi in LA, enlisting Sean Mackin of Yellowcard on the title track, and how “My Heroine” was almost left on the cutting-room floor. “When I wrote the demo, I recorded it badly, and [the band] didn’t see through the horrible recording that was in my basement with fake, bad keyboard drums…” he recalls. “I ended up getting my way as lead singers almost always do, and it turned into a huge hit.”
4. Avenged Sevenfold – City of Evil
City of Evil is Avenged Sevenfold’s commercial breakthrough — the release that yielded the band’s most inescapable song (“Bat Country”), an appearance on Guitar Hero II (“Beast and the Harlot”), and virtuoso moments that set a new bar (“Burn It Down”). But City of Evil also lightened up their sound, moving away from the metalcore screams of their early albums and embracing hard-rock sleaze instead. Throughout the songs, M. Shadows showed us his vocal chops, whereas Synyster Gates shredded through some epic solos, reflecting the band’s love of Metallica and Guns N’ Roses. Even though it was accessible, A7X always followed their own path, unaffected by the trends of the time — an instinct that they still follow. It’s allowed them to soar to bigger and better stages, becoming heavy luminaries.
3. Paramore – All We Know Is Falling
People continue to debate whether Paramore are an emo band, considering where their recent albums have gone. Their 2005 debut, All We Know Is Falling, definitely contributed to the scene at the time, but more than that, we can credit it to introducing us to a group of ambitious teenagers from Franklin, Tennessee, seeking an outlet for their adolescent rage. They had no shortage of material, either, drawing from the divorce of Hayley Williams’ parents and Jeremy Davis’ sudden departure. “Pressure” hooked us right from the start; “Conspiracy” showed off their stadium-sized ability; “My Heart” featured a screamo outro that nodded to their love of heavy music. More than any sound, though, Paramore’s story is about resilience, intention, and evolution. This is where it starts.
2. Panic! at the Disco – A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out
Little did Panic! at the Disco know the fandom that they’d spawn when they released their debut album in the fall of 2005. To this day, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out feels like an impossibly high benchmark within the emo canon, drenched with polished theatricality, infidelity, and enough long song titles to leave you short of breath. During an anniversary reflection, Brendon Urie called Fever an album of fresh experiences, as the songs were written while he was still in high school. “First time I played a real part in a band. First time I lived away from home for longer than a few days. First time in a recording studio. First time writing and recording a full album. First time being the singer of a band,” he wrote in 2015. If you want to feel more nostalgic, Panic! are revisiting the 2005 album next month at When We Were Young, playing it in full.
1. Fall Out Boy – From Under the Cork Tree
Alongside the other 2005 albums on this list, it’s still hard to fathom that Fall Out Boy’s From Under the Cork Tree turned 20 this year. During its anniversary month, we asked our readers to tell us the album’s best songs to mark the occasion, coming back with everything from “7 Minutes in Heaven (Atavan Halen)” to “XO.” Culturally and commercially, Cork Tree was a milestone for the band, who spent years entrenched in Chicago’s hardcore underground before going in a different direction. Not only did it boast sprawling, tongue-in-cheek titles and verbose songwriting, but it was also loaded with raw emotion, delivering blasts of irony, angst, and heartbreak to thousands of outsiders. From Under the Cork Tree still holds up, and it’s tough to imagine that changing.