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The naysayers who still think that Radiohead don’t deserve the Most Important Band in the World tag don’t have much of an argument after the events of the past seven months, which found Oxford’s favorite sons turning the music industry on its head by “leaking” their own album on the Web a week and a half after announcing its existence, managing to figure out how to make a boatload of money by giving their music away for free in the process. With their New Year’s Eve “Scotch Mist” Webcast, the band not only turned out exciting and intimate live in-the-studio performances, they also erased any notions of Radiohead as humorless depressives with the inclusion of bits of hilarious video ephemera. Oh, yeah, and that In Rainbows (TBD) thing: alternately sexy and scary, elegantly simple and deceptively complex, delicate as a flower and punk as fuck. Like few bands before them, Radiohead continue to tickle the pleasure zones of critics and inspire and challenge fellow musicians while remaining one of the most popular bands on the planet.

— Will Spitz

See Also: Best Act, Best Male Vocalist

Runners-up
1. Modest Mouse, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank (Epic)
2. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black (Republic/Universal)
3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Merge)

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