Hopes and Fears by Keane

Hopes and Fears, Keane's debut album, arrived on Island on 10 May 2004 and made its case with barely a guitar in the room. The band from Battle, East Sussex, had lost guitarist Dominic Scott in 2001, and what was left, Tom Chaplin singing, Tim Rice-Oxley on piano and backing vocals and Richard Hughes on drums, built their sound around the keyboard instead.

It's a bold move, and it pays off. Rice-Oxley's chords roll and swell like a chapel organ in a gale, Hughes keeps it all marching forward, and Chaplin's clear, soaring voice reaches for the rafters every single time. The mood is right there in the title: wistful, big-hearted, a little bruised. "Somewhere Only We Know" is the one that stuck, all hushed longing that breaks into a sweeping chorus, with "Everybody's Changing", the lovely, doleful "Bedshaped" and "This Is the Last Time" not far behind.

It went straight to number one in the UK, finished 2004 as the country's second best-selling album and has since gone 9x platinum there. Winning Best British Album at the Brits in February 2005 sent it back to the top of the chart. More than 2.7 million copies have sold in the UK alone and over 5.8 million worldwide by November 2009, and in 2010 it made the Brits' shortlist of ten for the finest British album of the past 30 years. Under the Iron Sea came next.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.