"We're An American Band" by Nick Whitey

The Brits invented the notion of rock bands as diamond-hard artistic entities which synthesized and alchemized several personalities into a sum much greater than the whole. Buddy Holly and the Crickets don't count. The Beatles in the 1960s and Led Zep in the 1970s lorded over the mythical rankings which combine an inscrutable formula of critical fawning, dominating sales and artistic integrity.
However, the Americans took the crown in the 1980s with REM (and I don't want to hear about U2, which arguably could have held the title in this decade, or the 1990s or 00s too. U2 is disqualified simply based on the fact that they WANT the title so badly. Great music though). REM changed the game, with Stipe's deliberately garbled vocals and an inexorable march toward the shiniest-yet-not-pandering melodies since, well, the Beatles. Although REM arguably did not hit their sonic peak until the 1990s and their unstoppable run of Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi, by the end of that run their sheer longevity disqualified them as the artists of the 1990s.
You see, the best band of each decade must have a newness to them. And we do not mean an actual newness of just having been formed. We mean a newness of the combination of those qualities which make them the band of the decade. A feeling of coming into their own. After Reckoning, Murmur, Document and Green you could not dispute that REM first came into their own in the 1980s. That is why despite lackluster sales, the sheer brilliance of Pavement allow them to take the best band crown in the 1990s. And please, don't hand me Nirvana or Pearl Jam. The former was shackled by Cobain's acting out and only two great albums and the latter by Vedder's clichés (brilliantly executed, but clichés nonetheless).
Which brings us to the oughts. The first decade of the 2000s, so far, is the Wilco decade. Although Tweedy has been kicking around since the late 1980s, he has been shackled in decades past. In the 1980s it was Farrar's shadow and in the 1990s it was growing pains and lack of appreciation for AM, Being There, Summerteeth and the Mermaid Avenues. What's more, he was too unfocused on Wilco (see Golden Smog).
But there is simply no denying that with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and the recently released A Ghost is Born, Wilco is the top band in the world. Tweedy and Co., like Malkmus, Stipe/Buck/Mills, Plant/Page, and Lennon/McCartney/Harrison before him, simply carries the day in the necessary categories. Of course while there is time for another band to step forward before the decade is out -- not so fast, Radiohead -- Tweedy, newly clean, shows no signs of abating. If he can stay away from the fatal disease of overweening ego, no easy feat as the movie I Am Trying to Beak Your Heart showed, and stay away from monkeying with the personnel in a way which destroys the chemistry, Wilco should continue the USA's run of best band of the decade for the third decade running. Get on board.