Is This It was named the best album of 2001 by Billboard, CMJ, Entertainment Weekly,[5] NME, Playlouder,[50] and Time.[5] Magnet and The New Yorker included it in their respective unnumbered shortlists of the best records issued that year.[50][51] It figured highly in other end-of-year best album lists: at number two by The Herald,[52] at number three by Mojo,[50] at number five by The New York Times,[53] at number eight by Rolling Stone and by USA Today,[50][54] and at number nine by The Boston Phoenix.[55] The record featured at number two behind Bob Dylan's Love and Theft in The Village Voice's 2001 Pazz & Jop critics' poll, which aggregated the votes of 621 prominent reviewers.[50] In 2002, Is This It was named Best Album at the NME Awards and Best International Album at the Meteor Music Awards.[56][57] It was nominated in the latter category at the Brit Awards, where The Strokes won Best International Newcomer and received a nomination in the Best International Group category.[58] The same year, the quintet won Band Of The Year and Best New Act at the NME Awards and was nominated in the latter category at the MTV Europe Music Awards.[56][59]
Legacy
Influence
"Probably the most important rock album of the past 10 years: it prised the zeitgeist away from nu-metal, restored the pre-eminence of rattling neo-new-wave, and was the chief catalyzing influence on Arctic Monkeys."[60]
—The Guardian in 2007, on the importance of Is This It to guitar bands and alternative music during the 2000s
Gary Mulholland of The Observer considers the release of Is This It a "world-changing moment" and notes that its impact was "immediate and dramatic" on both music and attire.[61] BBC Radio 1's Zane Lowe suggests that the album moved popular opinion from DJs and pop music to "skinny jeans and guitars", "the template for rock 'n' roll in the modern day".[62] Tam Gunn of FACT agrees and explains that it "caused a sea change" in mainstream music in the U.S. and the UK,[63] while Anthony Miccio of Stylus points out that The Strokes' success created the commercial context for "other new-wavers" to flourish.[64] Rolling Stone writes that Is This It inspired "a ragged revolt" in Britain, led by The Libertines and Arctic Monkeys, and continued its influence in the U.S. on the success of bands like Kings of Leon.[65] The Observer shares a similar view and concludes that "a fine brood of heirs", like The Libertines and Franz Ferdinand, would not have existed and been successful if The Strokes had not reinvigorated "rock's obsession with having a good time".[66] Jared Followill of Kings of Leon notes that the album was one of the main reasons that he wanted to get into a band; he states, "The title track was one of the first basslines I learned ... I was just 15 at the time."[67]
Jed Gottlieb of the Boston Herald argues that, although Is This It provided substantial musical influence, its biggest success was in revamping the music industry and making A&R delegates scout and promote alternative bands.[68] Gunn links the success of alternative music in British charts throughout the 2000s to the album, but notes that "the copyists" could never match the attention to detail and heartfelt emotion of The Strokes.[63] Mulholland adds that even the pop stars of that decade who rediscovered disco, electro, and synthpop owe a debt to the record, because its commercial success "made every forgotten art-pop experiment of the late 70s and early 80s instantly hip and ripe for reinvention".[61] Hamish MacBain of NME writes that "the western world has moved on, and is now swinging to the tune of Is This It",[69] while Pitchfork Media's Joe Colly suggests that "you only capture this kind of a lightning in a bottle once".[70] Gunn concludes that, while the status of the album as the 2000s' most influential guitar record may be "a double-edged sword" because of poor quality copyists, its status as the decade's best pop album should not be in doubt.
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