We are going to play the gender card again on this selection. There are musicians who are ranked lower on this list who may have been more successful and played in much bigger venues, but it is our guess that nobody inspired more women to pick up a guitar than Joan Jett.

Is it possible to have a brilliant career but still somehow seem lost in the shuffle? This rhetorical question seems accurate when looking at the Damned, a Punk band that was certainly influential yet always appeared in the shadows of larger Punk bands.

When we initially envisioned doing this list yearly we assumed that we would be looking at Britpop acts years into the future. We forgot about Pulp, who scored big during the Britpop years but were together for over twelve years before it.

As much as we love to categorize musicians in certain genres, we sometimes come across an artist that just seems to defy those pigeonholes. With Matt Johnson and his continuous project, The The, the genres that they would be placed in seems to change which each passing album.